Commons:Village pump/Archive/2009/03

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

whitehouse.gov weblinks to the Bush administration

Hi there. Commons hosts a lot of images from the whitehouse.gov, apparently after the change all links on the old admistration website are broken. Is it possible to run a bot that replaces http://www.whitehouse.gov/ or http://whitehouse.gov/ with http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/ for images uploaded prior January 20, 2009? Is this general replacement possible or are there any specials needing attention or making this impossible? Thanks for your suggestions, you can take samples in Category:White House photographers, some in Category:PD US Government or Category:Executive Office of the President images. --Martin H. (talk) 00:29, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Nothing? Ok, im also unsure about this and i dont know if it works always. But it works in most cases, see this dif and review the old and the new revision. --Martin H. (talk) 17:07, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Use of some professional photos

I have the opportunity to upload some professional photos like these [1]. The photograph can give me the consensus to use them but he would keep some rights (cc-by-sa could be acceptable). Please could you give me the "best practices" to upload these photos by me? I need a permissions for any photo or it's sufficient a "general" permission? Sorry if I ask here but I have never faced a problem like this. --Ilario (talk) 09:54, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi. You will find the general information about permissions here. Basically, the photographer will have to send an e-mail (there is a model available) stating that he's ok to release a number of his pictures under CC-BY-SA. A list of pictures can be included in the e-mail, or a mention that all his work is covered. Feel free to ask again if something is not clear in the procedure I've pointed to you. Thanks for your work, --Eusebius (talk) 10:28, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Accept the Rollback policy

Hello,

Some people were working for a policy for Rollback on Commons for over a month right now, and it should be moved on to Bugzilla.

I would like to ask everybody to take a look at the policy and when needed oppose on the talkpage with your reassons, otherwise we could place it on Bugzilla in a week or two.

This is not Milan Kundera

Looks as if you're right. Milan Kundera looked like this or this in 1973, and like this in 1975, so I'd be surprised if that were him on these photos from 1954. Maybe the BArch photos show his cousin de:Ludvík Kundera, who was on a two-month visit in Berlin in 1954[2]. Here's a photo of Ludvík from 1963. Lupo 11:34, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Lupo. Is it possible to correct that information? It's confusing... The pictured person may be Ludvík Kundera, but I'm not sure. I'll try to find out more. --Vejvančický (talk) 13:35, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

It must be either Milan or Ludvik, since there don't seem to any other Czech writers named Kundera in 1954. And given Lupo's picture links it looks more like Ludvik. But it would be good to have a picture of Milan from the 1950s just to be completely sure... PDD (talk) 17:42, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

"South Tyrol" ?

Someone is using the User talk:CommonsDelinker/commands to "arianize" all the names of the bilingual (German/Italian) area of Italy officially named Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol (as also in en Wikipedia: en:Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, by deleting the official bilingual form and leaving the German-only form. However, all names in this area are officially and compulsorily bilingual, in some parts of it are trilingual (Ladin also exists). All of the three languages (Italian, German and Ladin) are official languages in trhis area, to the point that even the Identity card is different from the rest of Italy.
Since this is a very sensitive issue, over which italians have fought for decades, I'd rather suggest to stay put to the official denomination (blingual) and to stop any fyurther "arianization", reverting what has been done already. Otherwise, the counter-"latinization" (and WW 3) phenomeon will surely occur. Furhthermore, the presente categeory category:Trentino-South Tyrol is a linguistic nonsense. The name of the region is: "Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol" (as per above). --User:G.dallorto (talk) 12:29, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Communes in South Tyrol, Italy, European Union go, according to en:Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Specific topics (see Italy#Province of Bolzano-Bozen), generally by the name of the language majority. This is an established consensus at the English Wikipedia. The use of double names ("-") has long been discouraged as confusing for readers because it mixes municipalities of the Graun-Curon kind with those of the Welsberg-Taisten type. Furthermore, it does not reflect English usage which is mandatory at least for categories. "Alto Adige/Südtirol" is not common English usage, either, but only administrative phraseology. Using this wording would make as little sense to me as using Xizang/Tibet for Tibet just to please some Chinese readers (not that they ever asked for such a change). Gun Powder Ma (talk) 12:43, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

The "language majority" in Italy is in fact Italian. The "bilinguism rule" was issued to protect the German and Ladin minorities. The naming convention on Commons is that English names should be used when available (therefore, neither "Trento" (Italian way) nor "Trient" (German way) but "Trent" (english way), regardless fo the fact that the majority of people in Trent speak Italian. If no English name is available, then the official name should be used (nowhere I found the weird and fanciful rule of the "majority of the speakers" regardless of the official name of the town). And in our case, the official name is, by a law which is a part of our Constitution and international treatises with Austria, bilingual and even trilingual. Bilinguism is compulsory, and all names MUST be written in both languages, I repeat it, as a decision taken to protect the German minority, after Fascism had tried to crush the use of German under the same argument of "We must always use the names in the language of the majority of the speakers, that is, Italian!". Please don't take us back to Fascist ways of reasoning. It already cost us 400,000 lifes in Italy alone to get rid of them. --User:G.dallorto (talk) 12:50, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Post scriptum. Bolzano has a majority of Italian speakers. I notice that you did not, after your own "rule", ask for its change into "Bolzano" alone. Curiuos indeed. --User:G.dallorto (talk) 12:58, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I will ignore your likening to Fascists ways to keep up a constructive atmosphere, but generally you should be aware that while South Tyrol is in Italy for 90 years, Italy is in the EU for 50 years. South Tyrol is, as any other region in Europe, just as much part of the EU as of Italy, and the EU is very serious about the protection of minority rights.

AFAIK, the en:Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Specific topics (see Italy#Province of Bolzano-Bozen) was established just because the older "-" rule was found confusing. Perhaps someone could dig out the relevant discussion at the English WP (haven't found it yet). The point here is obviously that the local names of the language majority are considered the English name then for lack of a better one. Certainly an awkward way of seeing things, but you actually seem to be defending a naming convention which has long been considered unhelpful and inadequate for Wikipedia. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 13:06, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

PPS: Trent is in fact called in Commons Trento after the Italian-speaking majority, so it is actually a confirmation of the naming convention also applied in South Tyrol. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 13:20, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

(indent)Some general remarks: The naming conventions from English wikipedia are often helpful when naming places etc at Commons, but they do not override whatever consensus (or lack thereof) the commons community should reach. Furthermore, delinker should not be used for controversial category moves without prior discussion. And thirdly, let's avvoid using terms like "arianization" or comparing with fascism/nazism/communism or such like than can only make this discussion more difficult than it already is. As for what the places should be named, I have absolutely no clue - but I the local (first) official name might be a solution, or if than can't be easily determined, all the official names. A double or triple name in a category isn't that much of a practical problem. Regards, Finn Rindahl (talk) 13:57, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Wise words. However, I am not so sure whether double or triple names such as

I agree with Giovanni; we should use official names. And rename the categories into "Province of Trento" & "Province of Bolzano/Bozen" instead of "Trentino" & "South Tyrol"; anyway it's uncorrect to use the words to arianize and the German minority.--Friedrichstrasse (talk) 14:06, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Why should we use an administrative term? We don't use province of Xizang, either. In international usage, South Tyrol and Trentino go by en:Euroregion Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino, not by Euroregion Tyrol-Province of Bolzano/Bozen-Province of Trento. The provincial names, one won't find outside Italian offices. I have yet to hear somebody saying 'I am going skiing in the Province of Bolzano/Bozen". Such phrases are out of touch with everyday life, and hence do not conform to Wikipedia standarsds which stress commun usage. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 14:22, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Because italian municipalities (I mean, the communes of the italian republic) are categorised under their province; we have "Provincia di Avellino" instead of "Irpinia"; and "Province of Ogliastra" instead of "Ogliastra"; and "Province of Trieste" instead of "Venezia Giulia".--Friedrichstrasse (talk) 14:26, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

See below. In fact, English names are used for these categories throughout Wikipedia. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 16:19, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Why is it always such a theater with the names in my home province... arrgh.

currently the only official names are the ones introduced by en:Ettore Tolomei during the fascist Italianization campaign in the 1920ties; the German and Ladin names are currently only tolerated; the reason for this is that the provincial council is required by law to make a toponym law, which will recognize officially the German and Ladin names; but should (as wished for by the majority of the people in the province) at the same time rescind the names invented by by Tolomei; which would collide with a law that says all names need to be bilingual (Ladin names are actually never explicitly mentioned) Since this is a contentious issue the legislature has avoided to even debate it for years. As there are just a bit over 200 names going back before Tolomeis invention spree (which resulted in 8000 new names) so I think it is preposterous to speak of a "arianization", when using a name that has been in use for a thousand years and not a bad translation/inventions of said name (i.e. Gossensaß was renamed as Colle Isarco (Hill-upon-Isarco) when the name actually derived from Gotzen Sass = miners quarters)

The editor doing all the category moves is the first to actually try and sort the categories of this province and is keeping to the naming convention of the English wiki, by not requesting any moves for communes with Italian majorities.

I find the threat of a "counter-"latinization" (and WW 3) phenomeon" to be counterproductive as in my eyes it is a clear threat (in the sense of "Do not do this moves or else...") especially mentioning (and WW 3) I find to be bad taste. I agree that this is a contentious issue and yes "italians have fought for decades" about it: fought to have the German names erased actually (the latest attempt was the English wiki, where 2 editors went so far as to attempt name changes like: "New South Tyrolean Daily" into "New Province of Bolzano-Bozen Daily")...

if we were to use the currently only official names then I must say that I find the idea repulsive to have to use names enacted on March 29th, 1923 by a decision of the Grand Council of Fascism, which were imposed on and to this day are resented by a large majority of the local community.

I do wish to avoid double names for categories and prefer redirects, but I am always ready to discuss to find a consensus, but only if the discussion is kept only on this page, there are no more threats, there is no more comparing of editors to fascists-Hitler-Nazi or the like, there is no accusations of arianization or similar use of "nizations" words and less bolding of text please. Simple for the reason that I resent the tone with which this discussion was started (about an issue which inside the province has been relegated to the extreme political fringes) and am only ready to discuss it in a civil manner. --Noclador (talk) 15:12, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I think that both versions of the name are to be used, and the italian version should go first: "Bolzano/Bozen", "Colle Isarco/Gossensaß", "Rasun-Anterselva/Rasen-Antholz" and so on...
The name of the regions "South Tyrol" and "Trentino" should be renamed into "Province of Bolzano/Bozen" and "Province of Trento", like every other province of the Italian republic. Is there someone that doesn't agree?--Friedrichstrasse (talk) 15:39, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

The province of South Tyrol does not exist at all!!! What exist is the Province of Bolzano. All the provinces in Italy take their name from the local capital town. The name of this specific alpine region is given by the combination of the names of the two main areas included: so Trentino/AltoAdige or Trentino/Sud Tirolo. Whatsoever you want to translate the name in English you cannot escape to have both names together. This is just a matter of simple basic geography. --Bramfab (talk) 16:54, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Again, Italian naming conventions are irrelevant as far as the categories in Commons are concerned, the English usage is that what counts. And in English, the official name of the province is "Autonomous Province of Bozen - South Tyrol" Gun Powder Ma (talk) 17:30, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that could be good. So, some times you can understand.--Friedrichstrasse (talk) 17:41, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Not every province of Italy (we have Ogliastra, Medio Campidano, Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, and so on...) but I agree with you, as the province of Bolzano/Bozen - Alto Adige/Südtirol does.
Anyway the user Gun Powder Ma is trying to flame this question: on the category Nationalpark Stilfser Joch (= "Parco Nazionale dello Stelvio") he changed this description: Der Nationalpark Stilfser Joch ist ein norditalienischer Nationalpark into Der Nationalpark Stilfser Joch ist ein Nationalpark in Südtirol (Italien). It's not correct at all, as the national park is divided into Lombardy, Trent region and South Tyrol region. In my opinion, such users should be banned.--Friedrichstrasse (talk) 17:02, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

There's really no reason why this should escalate to the point where serious long time contributors are being blocked or banned, but may I request that all parties now refrain from moves and edits that concerns the name of this region until this discussion has had some time to develop (hopefully towards a consensus of sorts). Finn Rindahl (talk) 17:11, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

"Serious contributors" should know where the Nationalpark Stilfser Joch is; or that the form Provice of South Tyrol does not exist at all, in any language.--Friedrichstrasse (talk) 17:14, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Friedrichstrasse, I hope it is ok for you if I do not respond to your petty attempts at ad hominem attacks. If the Nationalpark Stilfser Joch is also divided into the Lombardy and Trent region, then why don't you simply add that information? Gun Powder Ma (talk)

@ Friedrichstrasse; please tone down your remarks - you are correct regarding the national parc, but that is no reason to call for the ban of a user - everyone now and then makes errors. --Noclador (talk) 17:41, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Just a sum up: in Italy administrative division is Region/Province/Municipality. So the region is named Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol (as in the Constitution of Italian Republic, previously named Trentino Alto Adige without "-" and second languages name), this region is formed by two provinces, named Provincia autonoma di Trento and Provincia autonoma di Bolzano (again as in the Constitution). The Special Statute of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, who is a part of Italian Contitution as all the Special regional Statutes, said that where there is a german speak majority, german language has to be considered official like italian, not instead of. In Italy all administrative change, like new municipality or province, and even a change of name, had to be voted and approved in National Parliament, so even if a local counsil voted for a change of name, it is invalid until Parliament doesn't approve. So officiale name are the Italian ones, where there was a majority of german speakers, there are two official names, in italian and in german. I just want to remenber all that many town in Lumbardy, Veneto and so, voted in theri counsil for a bilingual name, italian one and local dialect one, and put this two nemae even in road signal. But no one of you think we have to use the dialectal form, and even for italian law, the road signal are considerend as turistic signal. --Skyluke★ | @it.wk 21:01, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm trying to get some funny points: "And in English, the official name of the province is "Autonomous Province of Bozen - South Tyrol" this affirmation would assume that any province in Italy (and I assume for similarity), China, Brazil, ... have an official name in English , and why not in Latin, Russian, Spanish and so on ... The only official name for each province of the world is the name given and recognised in the national language, the nomes in foreign languages are just traslation. Simple common sense. About the province of Bolzano, for people who don't like the "administrative phraseology" (as Gun Powder states above) the Italian name is "Provincia di Bolzano", in German is "Provinz Bozen" simple knowledge of local geography, no bases of linguistic theory or cerebral work is required. --Bramfab (talk) 09:54, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Good translations could be:

1. Autonomous Province of Bolzano

2. Autonomous Province of Bozen

3. Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen

4. Autonomous Province of Bolzano - Alto Adige

5. Autonomous Province of Bozen - South Tyrol

6. Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen - Alto Adige/South Tyrol

"Autonomous" can be left; but "Province" is the official designation of the territory. I would propose Province of Bolzano - South Tyrol.--Friedrichstrasse (talk) 11:13, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Finn said "may I request that all parties now refrain from moves and edits that concerns the name of this region until this discussion has had some time to develop (hopefully towards a consensus of sorts)". Second that request. With emphasis... Haven't we wrangled about this before here? I know it's been wrangled about on en:wp before... so please, everyone... find a compromise that works, bend a little, and don't take this quite so seriously. ++Lar: t/c 17:46, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

To discuss only with local habitants or people that know the situation (and the local sensibilities and minorities) very well overthere. What naming you follow is not that important, important is that you agree and that we can reach a stable consensus that will not be changed every now and then. --Foroa (talk) 06:54, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Wrong description of Wielun image?

It seems to me that the description of the image below is incorrect. The description says the image shows “Wieluń just after German Luftwaffe bombing the 1st of September 1939 ( The first day of WW II) Photo made from church tower in Wieluń.”

There are two major reasons why I think that this is not a photograph of the actual city, but of a model showing the effects of the bombing.

The first is the lighting. I cannot imagine any weather conditions under which a part of the city would be brightly lit while the rest is is in darkness. The lighting looks like one of a model in a room that is lit by one ore two spotlights.

The second is the point from which the picture would have to be taken. The description says it was taken from the church tower. On the image we see a baroque church on the left side. Under the picture's perspective the church its towers looks like a toy church. The tower from which this picture would have to be taken would have been at least 100m high. It is hard to imagine that the small town of Wielun had a church of this size. Again, the perspective is completely plausible for a photo of a model.

I do not know what are the policies and procedures for describing images at Wikimedia Commons. It may be that the description given to the picture is one that was already given to the original. There should be ways to scrutinize the current descriptions and to arrive at correct ones.

Theoretically could be lit by an aerial flare, I suppose, and the church could have been on a hill... AnonMoos (talk) 12:42, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I do not think we have "policies and procedures for describing images at Wikimedia Commons" other than provide the best to our knowledge description of images and provide sources and sometimes references for your description. However in case of old photographs there is often not much known about images other than what you see. Than it is a game of educated guesses and there are whole websites devoted to debating those guesses. In case of this image of Wieluń I agree the light looks strange. This might be due:

Uneven processing of negatives or prints this image was scanned from. In case of WWII images we even have some photographs taken from negatives which melted in fire for example File:Warsaw Uprising by Tomaszwski - Newspaper boys.jpg and other photos by the same photographer).

I also think that this image was more likely taken from an aircraft than a church tower. Other than that the image does not look to me like a model. The shadows look realistic, textures on the roofs scattered item on the ground and smoke from fires look realistic too. --Jarekt (talk) 13:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the texture and all the details of buildings, damaged windows, rubble and so on do not let this look like a model. It was the lighting that suggested this idea to me.

The perspective is like the one from a plane. No chance for a gigantic church tower in such a small place.

I am still wondering about the lighting and the details. The contrasts are so strong that the picture must have been taken at night. The image of Nevsky Cathedral has much weaker contrasts and the light is less focused. So, there would have to be two planes, one from which the photograph was taken and another one lighting the area. This would have needed extreme coordination.

Then the details are really surprising. I don't remember other WWII pictures with such a fine resolution (see eg this picture of Wielun or the ones on this page). If it has been made at night from a moving plane, then a very short shutter speed was applied -- and still there is this fine resolution. Also the air looks unusually clear to me for a picture taken from a plane or a high tower. Ed Scotch (talk)

Assuming it's not a model, the fact that the shadows all seem to point in the same direction strongly suggests the scene was lit by direct sunlight: you'd need an extremely bright and distant light source to get such shadows. I'm not sure why you think strong contrast implies night — usually you get the strongest contrast from direct daylight (especially if you slightly overexpose the negative, which is easy in daylight, and try to compensate during development by overexposing the positive too). The dark areas are probably shaded by clouds — I'm picturing here a warm late summer day with lots of cumulus clouds, and the photograph waiting for the light from a gap in the clouds to illuminate the area he wants to photograph.

But yes, this was probably taken from a low-flying plane, unless the town had more tall church spires than I'd consider likely. Not sure why you think the clarity is odd, though: this is still just from a height of a hundred or so meters at most — you don't get visible atmospheric haze at those distances unless the air is particularly foggy or dusty. And the detail just means the photographer used low-grain film and a good camera and generally knew what he was doing (focus, exposure, etc.) — which is probably a requirement for being chosen to take pictures from a plane in a war zone, anyway. (And the picture you linked to has some serious digital compression issues; it's quite possible that one could obtain a much better scan from the same original). —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:43, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

The image does look odd and for me the reason is people. Sure its supposedly been bombed so anyone with any sense will be in their cellars, but there are always people with more curiosity then sense. And there's not the usual detrius from this kind of event, abandoned vehicles and carts loose hats, shoes and scarves, nothing to indicate life and its disruption.KTo288 (talk) 08:39, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

That octaganol topped building in the foreground appears to be the town hall. There is a sequence of photographs, these two appear to have been taken close together, the photographer facing foward and to the right of the direction of the plane which is flying over the town hall and past the back of the two spire church seen near the left of the first photo:

At the town hall flying towards the two spire church and then the square (upper left corner)

Passing the two spire church, almost upon the clock tower and square

The next is taken looking back at the clock tower and square (top left):

There is another one looking back at the clock tower and square, but is presumably later when more forces have arrived, and they are assembled in an army type parade.

The square later with more troops, town hall seen at right edge towards top

Clearly reconnaissance photos, presumably by the Luftwaffe. Varying contrast may well be from the smoke haze. --Tony Wills (talk) 10:51, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Commons Helper Tool

I'm not sure where to write this but I think here is correct. I noticed that over on en.Wikipedia, SmackBot has been adding date tags to the template pd-self, such as this one:[4]. However, when coming to transfer one of these images over to Commons, the Commons Helper Tool didn't do it correctly. Instead of changing it to "{{pd-user-w|en|wikipedia|(user name)}}, it just left it the same. Is this just a one off or does something need to be changed? Arriva436talk/contribs 18:08, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Text page for One Liberty Place in Philadelphia, PA

You searched for One Liberty Place (all pages starting with "One Liberty Place" | all pages that link to "One Liberty Place")

No page title matches

There is no page titled "One Liberty Place". You can create this page.

Following the messages, there are two photos of the buildings of One Liberty Place.

If I were to create a page for One Liberty Place and add some details about the buildings, how would the existing photos of the building be linked to the new page? Is this a good idea for the inexperienced contributor? Davidt8 (talk) 14:50, 1 March 2009 (UTC)DavidT8

Suppose there are no photos of a significant museum in Philadelphia. Can I create a text page about the building, and add photos later? Davidt8 (talk) 15:31, 1 March 2009 (UTC)Davidt8

Is Category:Liberty Place not sufficient at the moment for the small number of files currently available? As far as the museum lacking photos, probably best for an inexperienced contributor to make a start by uploading the photos and categorising them in an appropriately titled sub cat: of Category:Museums in Philadelphia, I'd suggest. Welcome aboard! (and BTW we like "galleries" here - pages of text are generally considered out of scope). Man vyi (talk) 16:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps the best plan is the addition of more photos of One Liberty Place, inside and out, and when there are many photos, some more text would be appropriate. Davidt8 (talk) 23:46, 1 March 2009 (UTC)DavidT8

Descriptions of files are always helpful for those trying to find media. Man vyi (talk) 16:36, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Can I contact someone with a suggestion for an external link?

which describes the investigation into her death that would add to her bio I think—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.112.91.117 (talk • contribs) 23:40, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi, please note that this is not Wikipedia and we do not collect encyclopedic information here. Please post your message on Wikipedia, best place would probably be w:Talk:Hannie Schaft. Best regards, -- ChrisiPK(Talk|Contribs) 23:47, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, for the link,however when I go there, there is no way that I can find to post anything or ask a question WIKI will not recognize by password, just signed up... I am just trying to make a positive suggestion and there doesn't seem to be any way to do it... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hellen (talk • contribs) 00:06, 2009 March 2 (UTC)

Hi Hellen, there is no ned to sign up to be able to edit. Simply click the edit button like you did on this page. Regards, -- ChrisiPK(Talk|Contribs) 09:35, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

March 2

National Portrait Gallery UK embedding hidden watermarks

The British National Portrait Gallery has started offering higher-res images of their paintings on their website (many of which are in the public domain). The NPG claims full copyright over these images, however, and is embedding hidden watermarks in them (probably to facilitate tracking). This is quite disappointing as these images belong in the public domain, not horded by a single institution. The watermarks contain a Digimarc ID number, a transaction ID, and the copyright notice "Restricted Use, Do Not Copy". The Digimarc ID ties the images to this account at Digimarc. It is virtually impossible to remove the hidden watermark as it is encoded in a noise pattern that is repeated throughout the image. Even resampling or blurring/sharpening the image is not effective (unless the quality of the image is severely degraded). I'm not sure if we should ignore these watermarks (as the copyright claims are unenforceable) or discourage people from copying these images to the Commons. Any thoughts on this? Kaldari (talk) 19:07, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

If we believe image is PD in GB and US than I would suggest ignoring those watermarks. Do you have any examples on Commons. --Jarekt (talk) 19:21, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I believe the position of the community and the WMF is that the images are public domain regardless of any regional laws, legal interpretations, or court cases to the contrary and the WMF is willing to defend that position in court if necessary. The NPG and WMF have butted heads before, but so far not in court. Kaldari (talk) 20:06, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps the WMF could win a legal victory but it would certainly lose a moral one. What would be the result of the WMF winning such a legal victory? I suggest it would lead to a reluctance to share their images on the net, making it even harder for anyone not in London to see the pictures. If I remember correctly the high definition pictures are part of a NG/NPG project to produce extremely detailed copies of their pictures using specialised lighting and cameras, the results will allow viewers to zoom in on a picture to an unprecedented level, the equivalent of someone with their nose right up to a picture with a big magnifying glass. The difference between US and UK law over "sweat of the brow" aside for most purposes of wikipedia and users of Commons this level of detail is not actually that useful, one art critic for the BBC saying it was impossible to appreciate pictures this way. For most Commons purposes the use of lower quality versions and creating an external link to the high definition gallery version would surely serve our purposes just as well, not to mention maintaining goodwill with the physical owners of the pictures. Again what kind of victory is it if institutions become so protective so as to withdraw all digital versions of their collections.KTo288 (talk) 19:21, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Solution: Win court battle. Visit museum. Buy artbook in gift shop. Scan contents. Upload to commons. Ultimately these are public domain works. A court victory upholding that in the UK would be a huge boon. Megapixie (talk) 07:37, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

This has been decided by WMF elsewhere to the distress of other users, and I can see why. The combative attitude and the belittlement of UK laws and contempt of its courts with the phrase "...regardless of any regional laws, legal interpretations, or court cases to the contrary" is, and I find it difficult to find the words of sufficient strength, unfortunate. I find it rather schizophrenic of Commons to bend over backwards with regards to the regional differences with regards FOP of buildings and public art work, yet chose to disregard regional difference with regards reproduction rights.

If I was to suggest that Commons were to adopt the UK's liberal interpretation of FOP, and it should apply to all buildings, sculpture and artwork in a public place worldwide regardless of "regional laws" such as that in the US, I would probably be told not to be silly. This would be claiming an extraordinary amount of authority for UK law. The same level of authority that is being claimed on behalf of US law with regards to reproduction rights. Although US laws dismisses the slavish reproduction of a work of art as having no artistic merit and need not be recognised. UK law recognises that in doing so an institution is incurring an expense of time and effort, to produce a good and faithful copy of a picture its not as trivial as pointing a camera at a picture and pressing the button.If it was then Commons would be and should be satisfied with you or I pointing our digital cameras in the general direction of a picture and pressing the button. A body must be allowed to derive a benefit from their expenditure of time and effort, even if its just the goodwill of the Arts Council or why should they bother, if they were not to receive the rewards of their labours why not spend limited funding on other projects.

Sorry I needed a whinge, though I doubt that my words will have any real effect. Right at this moment UK museums and galleries are trying to fulfill their public education and free access remits by putting part of their collections on line. This way people all other the world are geting access to what we agree are part of the heritage of all mankind. I think as an organisation that encourages the sharing and dissemination of human knowledge WMF would want to encourage this, would look forward to the day when all museums and all galleries worldwide put all their collections on line for everyone to see for free. However WMFs policy on this may jeopardise this, if institutions come to believe that they cannot control the images they put on line and that doing so harms their own commerical exploitation of their collections, they may just give up the expense of sharing their pictures, limit the size and quality of images in their art books lest they be scanned and entrench. If this comes to pass we would all be the poorer for it.KTo288 (talk) 23:34, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Eyes roll. "This way people all other the world are getting access to what we agree are part of the heritage of all mankind." But only at 128x96 with a watermark. $5.99 for premium membership to DRM controlled versions of your favourite public domain works... Please. How can you possibly think that allowing a select group of institutions to control the copyright (and thus reproduction, distribution and display) of "the heritage of mankind" - effectively _forever_ is going to end well ? Megapixie (talk) 06:45, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Gathering a collection, looking after it and insuring it is not free. Creating good digital versions is not free. The alternative to your $5.99 fee is that there will be no official images on the net, just what can be produced from scans from books and postcards and photos taken by passers by.KTo288 (talk) 13:15, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Whether or not museums loose their impetus to create 5000dpi images of their paintings isn't really that important. What is important is that images of these paintings (at any resolution) are available to the world to see and reuse as is their right. If these images are only availble for a fee, they have effectively been robbed from the public domain. We are being asked to pay a ransom for something we already own. To me, this is morally repugnant regardless of what the law in Britain says (for the moment). Kaldari (talk) 22:38, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

If it comes to moral repugnance, the UK taxpayer (of which I am not one, as it happens, but I am grateful for the free access funded by UK taxpayers on my visits to the UK) might consider such lectures on access "morally repugnant". The taxpayer-funded national collections offer free access to all - in the absence of entrance fees, income from sales of reproductions offsets part of the costs to the UK taxpayer of maintaining the collections, the education programmes and outreach. While one might be very grateful for provision of free high-res reproductions, the fact that the trustees fulfil their legal obligations to the public by achieving value-for-money can hardly be castigated as "morally repugnant". Any more than one should castigate copyright owners in, say, the US for their "moral repugnance" in denying freedom of panorama. Man vyi (talk) 23:35, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the lack of freedom of panorama in the US is equally morally repugnant. I would certainly support the WMF rejecting those laws as well. I would love to see such laws challenged in court. If nothing else it would bring public attention to the issue and people might realize how absurd some of our copyright laws are. Kaldari (talk) 00:42, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

The issues about US FOP are a non-starter to me; the WMF has to follow the laws that are in force in its jurisdiction. Surely these watermarks are totally pointless, as there's no other places these pictures could come from. Ignoring those restrictions might help people become familiar with paintings and learn to value it over the latest episode of Survivor, meaning that museums benefit from those who want to see the originals.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:03, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

This is not an issue of regionalism; there is no special exception law, as far as I know, on the books in the UK allowing copyright of these works to persist in perpetuity and belong to the NPG (unlike say, the King James Bible, which does enjoy perpetual copyright in the UK). No matter what country an organization is located in, we summarily ignore claims to copyright that are invalid. If I sell my house, I have to follow certain local housing laws; if I sell the abandoned house down the street, well, that's just fraud. Dcoetzee (talk) 01:49, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

February 11

New PD tag

Hello,

The examination questions of national French diplomas is considered as public domain by jurisprudence (Tribunal de grande instance de Paris, 9 november 1988, and Cour d’appel de Paris, 13 june 1991): they are considered to be a complement to regulation, so they can bu published freely.

I have thus the project of creating a new tag, but is there any specific procedure for such a tag? Could it be integrated in template:PD

I guess {{PD-because}} can be used in those cases. I'm not sure it is worth a new template (besides, if the document is only textual in nature, it does not belong here). Thanks a lot for the reference, I have a personal interest in the case... Any university exam is covered by that? Anything that counts for a diploma? --Eusebius (talk) 19:59, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Hello,

I didn't know that one, thanks. I think about illustrations of the exam, not about the text. As far as I know, i.e. not much, the jurisprudence is about an exam at the medicine faculty, i.e. university exam. It seems to be valid for any official diploma, i.e. a diploma that is an official act of the State.

Adding more WikiCommons userboxes to your profile

I didn't want to insert the code in here, and mess up the post, however - is it possible to add more userboxes from the wikipedia side? I've found that there are a bunch of wikipedia userboxes, but hardly any wikicommons userboxes. Thus, for example, I wanted to add the Template:User American box to my profile? How do I do that? Is it possible? Thanks Zul32 (talk) 18:10, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Just stick to the babel boxes. Basically nobody cares whether you are british or american. What counts are the languages you speak. What purpose do all the other boxes serve, except decorating your user page (any why don't you just upload a pretty picture for that purpose ;-) )? --Dschwen (talk) 18:16, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

You can't directly "transclude" Wikipedia templates, but you can subst them on a sandbox page or your user page, and copy the resulting generated code to your page here on Commons, preferrably editing it suitably. Anyway, the approved Commons method seems to be to just add Category:Users in the United States to your user page... AnonMoos (talk) 07:14, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Put your userbox text here.

Searching for files *not* in a category?

Is it possibly to search for a string (in this case "Turku") on file pages that do not belong to a certain category or its subcategories (in this case Category:Turku)? Samulili (talk) 17:03, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

The only way to perform some of those more complicated queries (that I know) is to use "List Splitter" tool that comes with AWB. It would be great to get some of similar capabilities in "online" tool. --Jarekt (talk) 19:18, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

The advanced Mayflower search tool (this link is from the search page) can do what you want, you have to exclude each sub-category as well if you mean to exclude everything under the Turku tree. Unfortunately it seems to have trouble with category names containing a single quote " ' " so I couldn't manage a search that excludes "Tall Ships' Races, Turku" --Tony Wills (talk) 19:45, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Database index apparently way out of date, but still useful results for old files :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 21:35, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Tag for files containing multiple images?

Occasionally I run across images that are simple combinations of several distinct images. In these cases, it seems useful to crop out the separate images and upload them as well, in case they're useful in isolation. A good example is File:Split_Enz_at_Nambassa_January_1979.jpg. Can anyone tell me if there's already a cleanup tag for this? If not I'll create one. Thanks. Dcoetzee (talk) 19:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Deleting images

I load a lot of images and don't like reading instructions. I only get messages from bots inquiring about my obsolete orphaned images. I would love to delete my orphaned images but dont know how. If some human or articulate bot can communicate, I would appreciate it. Sorry for the hassle.--Smokefoot (talk) 23:45, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Generally we keep obsolete versions of images, and you should leave them in at least one category. Because its a wiki and we retain the history of everything so that changes (and mistakes) can be tracked, we keep all the revisions of images too. If you are revising images, then just upload the new one over the top of the old one (ie exactly the same name), if the new one is a different file format (eg SVG) add the appropriate template indicating a 'better' version is available. --Tony Wills (talk) 00:27, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

March 3

Need advises about ESA lisencing

Hello everyones, i need your opinion about this ESA's licensing? Is this licensing compatible with the Commons policy, i.e is it possible to upload with such licensing the related files? Thanks. Guérin Nicolas(messages) 10:47, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

It's not possible to use their images unless they release it under a free license and without usage restrictions. Restricting commercial reuse or requiring permission is not compatible with Commons:Licensing. --Denniss (talk) 11:44, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Inappropriate addition of "speedy deletion" tags to Cosplay images

User:AnimeFan is apparently going around and adding speedy deletion tags to any or all Cosplay images (dozens at least, so far). However, as has been discussed extensively in past deletion discussions here, under U.S. copyright law, clothing and costumes actually being worn by people are generally considered predominantly "functional" or "utilitarian" in character, so that photographs of clothing and costumes being worn by people are not usually copyright violations. Some of these images may end up needing to be deleted, but this is really not a matter for speedy deletions.... AnonMoos (talk) 07:36, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Let's dress Darth Vader costume, take a picture, and put it on several articles. I didn't know that fair use was allowed here. You know... more than 20 languages would apreciate the effort to illustrate their Darth Vader articles! AnimeFan (talk) 07:53, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Nice that you use sarcasm instead of substantively addressing the factual issues. What is speedyable about File:Grupo Rurouni Kenshin.JPG (the image I happened to come across)? AnonMoos (talk) 08:46, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Nope. You are using a copy of Lupin's broken popups.js. It has a bug in function getParamValue, which unfortunately overwrites our correct default implementation. Because of that overwrite, Lupin's popup breaks several other of our scripts that rely on a correctly functioning getParamValue. Make the function return decodeURIComponent (m[1]); instead of decodeURI (m[1]), and it should work again. Lupo 12:53, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Or alternatively just delete the whole function. We have a default implementation in MediaWiki:Common.js. Lupo 12:58, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Random file of a certain type?

Is it possible to browse random videos, or random audio files? I doubt it is, but if anyone knows how it might be please let me know. Richard001 (talk) 01:07, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Special:Random/File will display a random file description page. Not sure how to restrict it to audio and video... AnonMoos (talk) 06:55, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

New archive of historic polar images - online today

The Scott Polar Research Institute has today put online for the first time some 20,000 historic polar images, including the archive of photographs taken by Herbert Ponting (died 1935) who was the photographer who accompanied Scott on his expedition to the South Pole in 1910-13. There are also more recent images. I note that the Institute claims copyright on all photographs, even the very old ones, and each image carries a watermark to that effect. The archive can be found here. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:21, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Changing the flickr review system.

Hello,

I have been thinking about the system we use to review images from flickr and in my eyes we should change some things. There are a lot of images that would have failed a review by a trusted user but the bot let them pass. Somethings that could be better:

the flickr review failed template has to place images in te category copyright violations, images that are failed can stay on Commons now for years. And when the are in the copyvio cat the can be deleted quick.

Images from photostreams have to be checked by a trusted user first before the bot can mark them as reviewed, if somebody start a new photostream with only copyvios it will be spotted sooner, or when this is to hard to do with a bot we could say that the bot doesn't review images from photostreams with less that 50 images or so.

Maybe other people has more ideas Abigortalk 12:01, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I fully agree with the first point, and to tell you the truth, I thought it was already done that way :) Makes perfect sense to me. For the second point, I'm not a flickr reviewer so take my opinion on this with a grain of salt. It seems to me that the present situation is not so bad. Copyvios are caught by reviewing recent uploads, and deferring the bot's work to human contributors would only increase the backlog dramatically (it is pretty big already as far as I know). But I would be glad to hear what flickr reviewers think about that. --Tryphon (talk) 12:18, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

There is no backlog at the the stuff the bot marks as needed human review. There are a lot of copyvio stuff that is marked by the bot as reviewed and stays on Commons for a long long time... Abigortalk 12:21, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Adding failed images to copyvios is a good idea. I dont know, why for example File:Bon_iver_dublin.jpg was not deleted instandly: It was uploaded Oct. 16, marked as cc-by-NC on Oct. 16 and never deleted. The backlog of flickr files that uploaded prior to the inplememtation of the review is (nearly)gone. But please also keep the category Category:Possibly unfree Flickr images for the next time. --Martin H. (talk) 15:03, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Moving a lot of images from the English Wikipedia to Commons

At the moment the English Wikipedia contains a lot of images (around 800.000) and a lot of these images are free images which can be moved to Commons. I want to start moving a lot of these free images to Commons. I try to stick to Commons:Moving to Commons when moving images. This is of course a lot of work and i'm looking for people willing to help out with checking newly uploaded files. Anyone? Multichill (talk) 12:39, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Dang, it really takes a lot of time if one wants to do it properly... --Eusebius (talk) 14:22, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

When are the English Wikipedia going to stop accepting free licensed uploads? As it stands, whilst there are a number of suggestions on the upload form to use Commons instead of uploading locally, it is still possible to ignore these and upload freely licensed images there. If that could be stopped then it would help in stopping the large number of images which could be hosted here continuing to grow. Adambro (talk) 14:47, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

And same thing for all projects: info is often lost when unaware users move images from there to Commons. Images get tagged, creators aren't noticed and then images are removed... Too bad. --Eusebius (talk) 14:51, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it can take a lot of work to properly transfer an image but this prevents a lot of unnecessary deletions. I'll start with the easy images (own work images in use in pages). We could also start monitoring the newly uploaded files at enwp and transfer images to Commons right away. Multichill (talk) 15:39, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I doubt that the English Wikipedia (or any of the other language Wikipedias) will stop accepting freely licensed image uploads any time soon. Blocking these uploads from the Wikipedias would make the upload process even more hostile to new users than it already is. Wikipedia: The Missing Manual doesn't discuss images until chapter 15, because the Wikipedia user must learn many other things which image uploading depends on (such as how to use templates and categories). What percentage of Wikipedia users have gotten that far down the learning curve? Restricting uploads on the English Wikipedia would probably result in fewer images getting uploaded, because it would force some would-be uploaders to grapple with a whole new set of complications, such as figuring out how to log into Commons and learn another wiki. Uploading images is generally a complex operation due to the insanity of copyright laws and so on, not to mention the refusal of humans to standardize on just one language. Multi-linguality is the real problem here, the only reason why Commons exists as a separate site, and the ultimate cause of all our problems with integrating free content from the various Wikipedias. Even so, the move-to-Commons process could improve. I recently moved several dozen images to Commons from the English Wikipedia, and it was not as simple as it might have been. I couldn't see a new user having much hope with it. But over time we can expect general improvement in the tools and procedures of all the Wikimedia Foundation projects. I've seen noticeable improvements on the English Wikipedia since I started editing on it three years ago. Imagine what we'll have in ten years. Improvements might start to accelerate at some point, due to mutual feedback between tools. --Teratornis (talk) 05:17, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

There are a lot of images which have no real use except in a specifically English-language context in one or two articles on English Wikipedia; why should they be moved to commons? AnonMoos (talk) 03:48, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

@AnonMoos, if an image is in use at the enwp it is in scope at Commons so it can be moved here. One of the main reasons i started moving images from nlwp to Commons was the lack of categorization of images at Wikipedia. When an image is moved to Commons it is categorized so it's easier to find.

That doesn't take me more than a minute. If I'm doing it wrong somebody tell me. Its suppposedly even faster if you have a unified login (haven;t figured that one out yet). Ultra7 (talk) 22:52, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

The move in itself may be that fast, I don't know (never done it, I'm ashamed!), but checking your move may take some time. Some cases are simple, but some are not. We have to check the license again (some acceptable Wikipedia statuses are not acceptable on Commons), as well as the authorship of the file ("own work" can be implied on Wikipedia, but on Commons we need an explicit statement from the uploader, so we need to contact him). Some pics have an ok license, but are using it wrongly, also. The checking of legal info can be made more challenging by the variety of languages used on the source projects (the English WP is not the only one, by far). Plus, categorization is often not ok (maybe when you do it it's ok, but many movers blindly rely on the proposed ones, or sometimes on the translation of WP cats). And at last, the information template has to be cleaned up from the automatically generated and not-so-useful transwiki information. Plus, if you're really bored, you may want to internationalize the description. That's why I said the checking can take a lot of time. --Eusebius (talk) 07:03, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

It might also be nice if any talk page content could be retained as well, but I'm not sure that is supported in any way. They are often empty but sometimes there is some valuable extra info which is lost. Carl Lindberg (talk) 08:05, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I just presumed {{PD-self}} was transferrable. None of the other points look like a real problem to me (only talking about en.wiki mind) 11:59, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Dynamic variables broken in translated upload forms

Just got notified that dynamic variables (such as Maximum file size) don't work properly in the translated upload forms. As a comparison look at Own work upload in Swedish and Own work upload in English. Where the English one says 100MB the Swedish one says $1 (and the French one says 20MB). Don't know how to resolve this though. /Lokal_Profil 01:51, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

For most of these user interface messages, we can just make the "uselang hack" versions a transclusion of the base version. For instance, MediaWiki:Sourcefilename/deownwork contains {{MediaWiki:Sourcefilename/de}}. (I notice that the /sv versions of that particular message actually also are copies, not transclusions... that wouldn't be necessary there.) However, this doesn't work if the base version contains a variable like $1. In these cases, the text of the base version must be copied. Which is what I did now for the /sv messages.

BTW, for the frownwork form, I see 100MB, not 20. Lupo 07:21, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Hum I also see 100MB for frownwork now, must have been a glitch. /Lokal_Profil 22:24, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Looks good for me. I know that IE sometimes has troubles with cache purges; I usually need to do it repeatedly (three or four times in quick succession), and sometimes even that doesn't help. Lupo 08:47, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Using FF 3.0 which is usually quite good with purging. But I'm still getting the same problem, along with others. Which is the relevant MediaWiki page for the lower part of the upload screen for ownwork? Might be that I can find an answer there. /Lokal_Profil 19:30, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, I also use FF3 normally, I just mentioned IE because I know from testing that it has problems with reloads. But possibly it was this edit, which generates an error. Try forcing a reload now. Any better? Lupo 23:28, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Now works fine (for me at least, need to check with the others). Many thanks. /Lokal_Profil 18:58, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

If it is non-controversial, then given the high number of places it is used, the simplest thing is to upload the new image with the same name as the old one. Otherwise just click on the edit tab on the wikipages that contain it, and replace the text that is the name of the old one, with the name of the new one. Or add a {{superceded}} template (eg {{superceded|File:Central-african-republic_hi_res_ds.png|Hi res version}}) to the old image page and let the different projects update themselves when they feel like it. --Tony Wills (talk) 05:55, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't know that I would advise doing this, considering that the two images are completely different artistic renderings, and that the old image (though smaller) follows traditional heraldic conventions more closely than the new image does (the new image has a lot of fussy shading, which could be considered "artistic", but somewhat obscures the basic heraldic elements). AnonMoos (talk) 07:04, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

That might fall into the controversial cateory then :-). I am wondering whether the out of date {{Vector-Images.com}} template implies that this one is in fact a bad-un and will get the chop - hence the need for a new, different version --Tony Wills (talk) 10:59, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I need someone to do this, because to be honest wikipedia is very difficult for me to understand. Can anyone change this or request the change?Sangonet (talk) 03:44, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I can take care of this for you. Give me a day or so.--Captain-tucker (talk) 13:40, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

March 5

Hi, I would like to close this pending deletion request, but I'm not sure about the consensus here, after the arguments I gave. Can some people have a look at this DR? Thank you. →Ditithepenguin — 17:59, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

I will recuse myself as well, as I voted to delete. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 19:00, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

In a recent deletion request I learned about the template {{Copydesign}}, whose existence I was not aware of. Not to be surprised: it wasn't linked anywhere in the Commons namespace before that (see here).

The template says the following: "While the license of the photograph or other reproduction of this object as made available on this site is free, this should not be construed as to imply that the Wikimedia Foundation or the author of the reproduction claim or grant any rights as to the design of the object". Question: has this issue ever been discussed before? Has this interpretation ever been accepted by the community? To my knowledge, the policy regarding derivative works is that if the original work is itself copyrighted (such as a CD cover) then a derivative work of it (such as a photo of the CD on a table) is also copyrighted and can not be licensed freely, regardless of whatever the photographer says.

It seems to me that this template should be deleted, and the images that employ it checked. Things are either utilitarian and/or ineligible for copyright (and then can be photographed, freely licensed and uploaded here), or copyrighted and unable to be hosted here. Belgrano (talk) 13:33, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

In case it's not deleted, an explaination on the talkpage who to use that template would be welcome.--Túrelio (talk) 14:01, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

And what should that explanation say? Belgrano (talk) 15:59, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I put it in the wrong way. I meant that I wanted to have an explanation about why this template should be, according to you, deleted. For example, Natalie is copyrighted (a builder created it) but can be used freely (rights on commissioned fursuits belong to their owner, either because of an implicit permission—See the FPC page; I made it explicit to put things clearly— and because the original characters belong, 95% of the times, to their owner). I'm talking about the fursuit case here, not about cosplaying and the like. →Ditithepenguin — 17:39, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, I'd argue that a furry who uploads a photo of their fursuit on Commons should also grant rights to the character under the same free license that they are granting rights to the photo. If they're sensitive about how the character might be reused, a license allowing reuse may lead to an unfortunate situation. This is murky legal waters. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:17, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I think the tag is way overkill. The U.S. has (basically) no design copyrights, despite the links brought up in that discussion. They were considered in the 1976 Act, but not included. The entire section was inserted later though, but only for vessel hulls -- if you look closely, they basically just inserted the 1976 text but then changed the definition of "useful article" to mean "vessel hull" only. Also if you notice, even if design copyrights were valid, photographs of those objects were not infringements (§1309(e)). At any rate, that entire section of law is pretty much irrelevant for Commons; see the copyright.gov comments on the Vessel Hull Design Protection Act of 1997 which is what inserted that entire section of the copyright code. Photographs/videos of protected vessel hulls are fine too, so even for those there is no issue, and no need for the tag, I don't think. Some countries may have something along those lines, but it is obviously not required by the Berne Convention, and most countries use design patents to allow protection for such things instead I'm pretty sure. Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:17, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Inclusion of Erasermate novelty pen?

I've got 3 photos that are my own that I want to upload but I'm in a bit of a conundrum.

The photos are of 3 different Papermate brand Erasermate pens and one of the photos is of an Erasermate/Qbert(the video game) novelty pen with a Q-bert eraser on top and with the word Qbert on the packaging. Should I upload the photos? I'm pretty sure that the 2 pics I have of 2 other pens sans packaging are safe but the shape of the eraser plus the packaging in the third just makes it difficult. I'm not planning on pulling it out of the packaging so the best I could do, assuming the packaging was the only thing not safe to use, is edit it out of the photo. I need some ideas here because there are 2 different companies at play. Gottlieb seem to have allowed a pic of Qbert on the wikipedia entry for Qbert(though they don't seem to make video games any longer if I read correctly), and Papermate's wiki entry has their trademark as a pic so I'm guessing they are cool with this as well. Ideas? Ehrichweiss (talk) 22:47, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Why not to create a gallery to show an overview by year. One can select the best images with the right captions. If everything is in categories by day it becomes very difficult for somebody to find a”nice” photo of Putin he/she is looking for. It is much easier to scan through 1000 photos in one category of a year than to look in 365 categories of that year. Wouter (talk) 20:24, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

VP has pictures in every day category (all 365). As I write, there are 23 photos of VP in Category:23 February. That's just one day ... Evrik (talk) 20:43, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

But why should he be in the date categories (like 23 Feb) at all? Is there something special about the pictures? If I take a picture of a bird I don't put it in a date category. And gosh, if we have 365 pictures of Putin maybe we should be putting effort into getting pictures of someone else instead. Richard001 (talk) 06:49, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

A bird, of course, is unlikely to be carrying out a notable ceremonial or official function connected with a particular date. Man vyi (talk) 07:50, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

The categorization seems a little arbitrary to me. We could have a picture of Putin water skiing on July 23, 1999, a picture of Putin signing a treaty on July 23, 2004, a picture of Putin cutting a red ribbon at a dedication ceremony on July 23, 2001, and a candid picture of Putin leaving an airport on July 23, 2003. According to this categorization scheme, the only thing they have in common is the date, where it may make more sense to have a better organization (in this hypothetical example, recreational activities, official duties, something like that....) -Andrew c (talk) 17:02, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I have to agree, date categories can make sense, but in this case they don't. If there were a special event that took place, that should go in a date category (eg bonfire night pictures should probably go in the category november 5), but general pictures... it's pointless, as other than happening on that day, there is no connection to the date. Put them back into one category, and sort from there by function or something. -mattbuck(Talk) 17:35, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have to agree here - we should only categorize images by date when the date is actually relevant and not incidental. A category being large is never sufficient by itself to split it up. Dcoetzee (talk) 19:40, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

February 24

Bogus metadata

2008 Summer Olympics countdown clocks at Hong Kong Airport

I'm wondering if anyone has been to the Hong Kong International Airport recently and can verify if the countdown clocks that were at the Terminal 1 check-in area and arrivals hall are still there or no longer present, so these 2 DRs can be resolved. Thanks. BrokenSphere 05:03, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

The best way is to contact Chinese Wikipedia. They have an active crowd there and all it takes is a few day (if not the same day) to get replies back. OhanaUnitedTalk page 21:32, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I can't read Chinese (as you may recall). What would be the best section to post this request there? --BrokenSphere 16:57, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The secure server

I log in using the secure server, so when I attempt to a upload file and I get redirected to another page, it's a page that is not on the secure server, which means I'm logged out, which means I'm unable to continue the upload process or the file is attributed to my IP address instead. How do I deal with that? --Whipit!Now whip it good! 22:20, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Where are you redirected to? What is your interface language setting? Lupo 12:04, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

If you get “redirected” in other places, too, you probably need to install a Greasemonkey script to convert the insecure links into secure ones. --AVRS (talk) 12:14, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Even better: the user tells us where this occurs and where he gets "redirected" to, and we fix it! It's probably some hardcoded link going to http://commons.wikimedia.org instead of using {{special:fullurl}}. Lupo 14:55, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

March 9

Deadly mushroom

File:Schafchampignon.jpeg is mistakenly posted as an eatable mushroom, but it's extremely poisonous, please change it on all pages. This is a good replacement. //Sertiont|c 07:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm a bit skeptical media that will care very much about this milestone. 4 million is not a very special figure, and in my experience media cares little about number of such and such anyway. It doesn't make great articles. Had it been my call I would have waited for 5 million. But even so it doesn't mean we can't be happy about it. :) Njaelkies Lea (talk) 19:48, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

For perspective, as of November 2008, Flickr claims to host more than 3 billion images. Roughly speaking, that means for each upload to Commons, Flickr gets a thousand. I have found many photos on Flickr to be of encyclopedic quality (mixed in with a lot of garbage of course). While Flickr does not have the same goal as Wikimedia Commons, Flickr is evidently far ahead of Commons in terms of Human factors integration (i.e., usability). For several topics I have looked at, such as Wind power, Flickr has more images of encyclopedic quality than Commons has (or had, before I uploaded some of them from Flickr). To be fair, Flickr also has a lot of garbage, and most photos on Flickr aren't freely licensed, but perhaps by being so lenient with what it allows users to upload, Flickr encourages far more quality uploads than Commons has thus far garnered with its stricter (one might even say slightly hostile) approach.

The takeaway lesson from Flickr is that 4 million uploads is a drop in the bucket. If we brag to the media about 4 million, they will probably laugh at us. We are attracting a negligible percentage of people out there who are snapping away with digital cameras. We are far down the list of photo-sharing sites in terms of content share. While four million uploads is impressive when we consider how difficult we make the process (I'm impressed that a respectable number of users are determined enough to slog through it), the four million figure is mildly embarrassing in comparison to the billions of digital photos we could be collecting if we had state-of-the-art usability. We have a long way to go - assuming that our goal is to get our image count up.

How many files has Commons deleted? The percentage of uploads that get deleted is another (negative) indicator of our usability, particularly the subset of deletions that resulted from uploaders being unaware of our rules for content. We should not be comfortable with any deletion rate greater than zero (other than, possibly, deletions requested by the uploaders themselves, for example due to mistakes in the file names). As long as we need to delete uploads against the wishes of the uploaders, we have a problem that cries for a solution.

Aggressive deletion may have a hidden cost: discouraging and driving away new users who might have otherwise stuck around and gradually mastered our complex rules. A site like Flickr provides far more latitude, allowing new users to feel safe when they upload their initial garbage photos, perhaps making them more likely to stick around as their skills improve. Our aggressive approach to deletion may have the unintended consequence of raising the barrier to entry.

A possible solution might be for Commons to set up a photo-sharing site similar to Flickr (or perhaps map-based like Panoramio - which incidentally reached 5 million photos in just seven months after starting), with much more lenient rules, with the idea that the lenient site would work as a feeder site for Commons, for both content and users. Something like a giant sandbox site, where users could safely experiment without having everything they try be a mistake. I'm just tossing this idea out there - I understand it would be a major undertaking. It's something to think about.

You can't compare Commons with Flickr. That's like comparing the number of editors of Wikipedia to the number MySpace users. They have completely different purposes. Flickr pictures are for Flickr users (although we take a little from the generous ones), Commons pictures are for everyone. These 4 million are the community's, not whoever's Flickr page you are on. If we said, "Hey everyone! Upload whatever the hell you like regardless of license, copyright infringement, quality, usefulness to educational projects, etc." I'm sure we would be better suited to compete with Flickr, but I don't think that's the goal. 71.155.242.65 05:24, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Who cares if other people "laugh" at us? (which I consider highly unlikely, more likely they just ignore us as usual) And unlike Flickr, we only allow freely licensed images. We should celebrate our own milestones for ourselves. So congrats, Commons! --pfctdayelise(说什么?) 00:28, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

That looks like a great 4M file. We should do an announcement on the Main Page. :-) Congrats, everyone. There is much ground yet to tread, but considering our restrictions of scope and license I think this is an enormous milestone. Dcoetzee (talk) 00:56, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Congrats to everyone that participated in the xplosive growth of Commons - Badseedtalk 03:08, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I wrote a little bit about the image. I'd encourage other users to change and/or expand what I wrote. Maybe we should say something about geocoding? I would have added a sentence about that myself, except I'm not exactly sure what it is. "Kallerna added geographical coordinates for where the image was taken (geocoding) which allows....." Any ideas?-Andrew c (talk) 17:40, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the Flickr comparison is pointless. Most of what is on Flickr is crap; little of the non-crap is easy to find; very little of the easy-to-find non-crap is licensed for re-use. - Jmabel ! talk 16:50, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The UNwiki

wikt:wiki: "1. A collaborative website which can be directly edited by anyone with access to it."

commons:welcome: "Wikimedia Commons uses the same wiki-technology as Wikipedia and everyone can edit it."

The wiki is dead, long live the UNwiki. ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:22, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Commons, like Wikipedia, is a project with goals, not an anarchist experiment; it was never intended to be a "pure" wiki. If you want to complain about the protections, you'll need to offer a better argument than "it's unwiki" - after all, there is precedent for this in the protecting of templates used on many pages. Dcoetzee (talk) 01:55, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

You make a good point — trying to reason with you guys is pretty futile. :p ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:54, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

For reasoning you have to start with something reasonable. Being "wiki" is a tool for the main goal of producing educational content. Being "wiki" is not the main goal. It's not very likely that there are heavy errors in our image files for the Spanish flag or in our CC-by symbol. It's far more likely that some guy has fun putting a swastika or his penis on ten thousand Wikipedia articles or ten thousand pages on Commons. Being "unwiki" is just harm to an ideal, vandalism is actual harm.

Perfectness is impossible. You always have to make a compromise between the ideal and the reality. At the moment out of 5,343,354 pages in all namespaces 3,625 are protected. Less than one out of thousand pages are protected. The normal ratio in the outside world is thousand out of thousand pages being protected. So, with that, I guess, we're more at the wiki edge of the wikiness spectrum. --Slomox (talk) 04:17, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

It's not so much the actual protection, it's that many users now support this type of preemptive protecting that only a couple years ago would have been considered evil. It's the slow death of a dream. Watching people eagerly exchange their freedom for safety and comfort is always painful (I know, I live in America). Rocket000(talk) 09:01, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I'm not convinced by that. I can't quite see how being able to edit every page on a private project is a human right. Samulili (talk) 11:02, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I didn't make those quotes up; on top of that I am a long standing member of this project, with no history of vandalism... and I cannot edit any of those files now. ¦ Reisio (talk) 19:12, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

@Rocket000: You have to choose the right perspective first. If you are looking from the perspective of freeness: the more freeness the better. Looking from the perspective of safety: the more safety the better. Both freeness and safety are positive values. To balance both values you have to choose the perspective of the subject. For example the perspective of File:Flag of Italy.svg. How much can we gain if it's freely editable and how much can we loose if somebody edits it in bad faith? This calculus is relatively simple compared to the freedom vs. safety calculus in the American society you are refering to, cause no human lives depend on it.

I suppose File:Flag of Italy.svg is correct. It's at least not "wrong" in any meaningful definition of "wrongness". Perhaps some people would say the pantone color values should be changed to something else, other people might prefer yet another set of pantone values. But those are nitpicky details and do not involve "wrongness" or "rightness". The Italian flag is correct with green-white-red. So we cannot gain much by edits to the flag. Except if Italy changes its flag. But that's really unlikely. So what can we loose when the flag is changed in bad faith? The flag is used on at least 11,000 pages on our wikis according to the protection comment. Vandalism could insert inappropiate content in thousands of articles. That's a real harm. So I see no problem with protecting it. --Slomox (talk) 18:53, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, don't get me wrong. I'm not against protection all together. In most cases it's a necessity. Images like File:Flag of Italy.svgshould be protected. It's the acceptance by community that has changed—the philosophy of "everyone can edit it" that used to keep it in balance. In most cases, preemptive protection based on what a single admin thinks is not the way it should be, or was. I'm not arguing for unprotection or anything; it's a battle that has been lost a long time ago. Times have changed. Vandalism has won. In this day of protection, I just wish there was a third option where established users, not just admins, can edit. Rocket000(talk) 15:44, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I just checked out the user experience for uploading updated versions of protected files, and it kind of sucks. The usual message telling how to use editprotected has a broken link in the error message, and probably isn't very useful anyway, as many File talk pages are not watched. Consequently I've created a new page called Commons:Requested updates to protected images and linked it from MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext. Dcoetzee (talk) 10:05, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

@Reisio: and I cannot edit any of those files now Well, almost all of them need no editing, so that's no problem. But of course your point is still valid. There's a user rights gap between autoconfirmed and admin. Perhaps there should be an additional group for users who are long-standing contributors who are known to be not doing harm to the project, but who don't want to be involved with administrational issues like admins are. The group could get rights like being able to look at the list of unwatched pages, rollback, moving and editing protected pages etc. I'd support the creation of a new group like that. --Slomox (talk) 19:01, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

There are lots of proposed and working schemes called “Flagged revisions”. Is there one that would allow us to enable the use and display of stable versions of certain images and image pages from Commons in all projects by default? --AVRS (talk) 20:05, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, flagged revs asks for flagging all edits. I doubt, whether flagging all edits on Commons is feasible. Although it would be useful, cause vandalism on image descripton pages often is not noticed. --Slomox (talk) 21:34, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I was wrong. It's possible with flagged revs to change the behaviour on a per-page base. See the menu at [5]. So that would be a very good solution. --Slomox (talk) 23:30, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

By the way, on the main substantive point which seems to be at issue, there's really not much point in rendering vexillogical and heraldic whites as off-whites in computer images (as opposed to RGB 255,255,255 pure white) -- even if this theoretically might conform more closely to official color specifications -- since making such substitutions definitely does not improve the appearance of flag and coat-of-arms images on computer screens. There was a whole past prolonged edit war and general kerfuffle on Polish national symbols over exactly this issue, yet Image:Flag_of_Poland.svg now uses pure white (while the theoretically "correct", but dirty-looking, version has been shuffled off to File:Flag of Poland (normative).svg). AnonMoos (talk) 22:26, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The #ffffff vs not issue is at best peripheral to this. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:57, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

March 8

Images with permissions obtained by OTRS

Hi, We recently obtained the right to use a very good map of the Bucharest transport system by an email to the Romanian Wikipedia. The map was released under the CC-BY-SA license. I was wondering whether this file can be uploaded to commons or can only be used on ro.wp? Thanks.--Strainu (talk) 08:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I know the license is allowed. My problem was whether the way the rights were confirmed is OK for commons or not. :)--Strainu (talk) 11:09, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, the OTRS ticket system is shared by all the Foundation projects, so the ticket would be valid on Commons as well. Besides, if it's been released under CC-BY-SA once, then anyone can republish it under the same license. --Eusebius (talk) 12:06, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry about that. Yes, what Eusebius said. A license like CC-BY-SA is not exclusive. It applies to everyone. OTRS is not project-specific. Rocket000(talk) 02:49, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The Shakespeare Cobbe portrait

William Shakespeare (c. 1610)

Right now the recently unveiled Cobbe portrait is making a big splash in the news. Digging through online sources I was able to come up with two pretty good low-resolution photographs (File:Shakespeare Cobbe painting TIME.jpg, File:Shakespeare_Cobbe_portrait_detail.jpg), but it looks like the owners are keeping a leash on higher-resolution photos. If we could find a magazine that's printing a high resolution photo and scan it, or get a photographer to visit the painting while it's on display (they may not permit photography), it would be a great help. Dcoetzee (talk) 21:02, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It looks like Getty has the goods.[6]Kaldari (talk) 21:39, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Just love how they're claiming it as their intellectual property. Anrie (talk) 21:56, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Aha, I see the relevant text now: "Nevertheless, under Commons rules the {{PD-Art}} tag can be used for "faithful reproduction" photographs of 2D public domain works of art even where copyright might be asserted under local law in the source country. This is a rare exception to the usual Commons rule that all images must be free both in the US and in the source country." Thank you! Dcoetzee (talk) 22:32, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

"In April, the Cobbe painting will go on display for several months at the Shakespeare Center in Stratford-on-Avon. After that it will return to the Cobbe family trust." Unless someone wants to shell out $163 for the Getty version, we need to send someone to the Shakespeare Center to photograph this painting. Kaldari (talk) 22:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Why have I been blackballed?

I am new to Wikimedia Commons and Wiki in general. I tried to start a profile, and was told that I am not allowed. Why is this? I've never tried to start a profile before and my user name and corresponding email address are unique to me. What gives?

Maybe there is a hardcoded block for all names containing Jimbo ;-) --Dschwen (talk) 22:12, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

March 10

Need help with permission tag

Can someone check if I have chosen the correct tag for the this image? The original source says "These maps have been produced or facilitated by UNOSAT for the humanitarian community from public sources. We ask you to kindly credit UNOSAT and/or the original source if this information is used in a report, project etc." [7] So I assume we can use images from this resource as long as we attribute the images to the source. --Falastine fee Qalby (talk) 04:59, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that sounds too much like the wording often attached to a promo or publicity photo which is released to the press or academia for distribution, but which is not formally released under a free licence according to the specific Wikimedia Commons definition of "free" (Commons:Problematic_sources#Promotional_photos)... AnonMoos (talk) 07:20, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

GFDL 1.2 only on EN

I have all-but emptied the Category for GFDL 1.2 only images on EN WP; there are about 4 left. A discussion was started about depreciating the tag, I was actually hoping we could delete it completely. I would like the opinion of some of the Commons regulars, as it is a free image tag. The discussion is here. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja (talk / en) 12:54, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

It should be noted that this has already been done on the German Wikipedia. Hopefully by stemming the tide of image imports with custom templates from the Wikipedias to Commons, it will give Commons more flexibility in standardizing the templates here (as mentioned in a proposal above). This should also pave the way for a smoother transition to cc-by-sa. Kaldari (talk) 15:19, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Creating an official process for approving licensing templates

Commons has become littered with hundreds of random licensing templates, many of which are redundant, confusing, or completely invalid for our purposes. And every day new ones are being created without any sort of approval or oversight process. This causes unending headaches for those of us trying to manage licensing and copyright issues on commons. It also, on occasion, forces us to delete images which might otherwise have been added under valid licenses.

It seems to me that we could save ourselves a huge amount of trouble if we just instituted a practice of having "official" licensing templates that had been debated and approved by consensus and deprecating everything else. In other words, licensing templates should be treated like official Commons policies. In order to create a template, you would first have to propose it (on some page created specifically for this purpose). The person who proposed the template would explain its purpose and why they thought it was necessary. The template would be discussed and debated. If it failed to achieve consensus it would be marked "not approved as an official license". If it achieved consensus, it would be marked "approved" and become an official licensing template and would be added to a list of officially approved and fully valid licenses. This process would be required for all new licensing templates, although old templates could also be submitted to the process. Initially this process would not involve deleting any images or templates, it would only involve marking templates as "officially approved" or "not officially approved". Once a stable set of official licensing templates were established we could then talk about what to do with all the old ones. Kaldari (talk) 17:02, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this is an excellent idea. Some of the more obsure templates seem to have been created specifically to support the uploading of a particular file a user wants to host here, and there is no mechanism at the moment for checking that. Theoretically, templates can be nominated for deletion but where that happens at all it is often years later after many files have already been tagged, making it hard to decide what to do with those files if the template is deleted. Eventually all existing templates ought to be subject to this process. Perhaps a Commons Project could be set up, to select and nominate for discussion say one existing template a month, starting with the easiest ones? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:31, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea. --Jarekt (talk) 18:06, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd propose: Be bold and create the page! It'll clearly be useful to have some review for the templates. --Slomox (talk) 00:45, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Before I took a little vacation from Commons, I was working towards something like this. My approach was this: Make single powerful meta templates for each group of licenses (namely CC, GFDL, PD). This is partly already done with {{autotranslate}} and common layout templates. But what I'm talking about is having all the templates in (for example) Category:CC license tags combined into one. Instead of going around and tagging each template whether or not it's official, let's simply control what templates use our 3 or 4 master templates. We can actively watch and control all "official" templates this way (categorize them, label them, whatever). It would also help us: 1. standardize the templates in look and wording, 2. auto-categorize them (extremely useful for bots and scripts that have to read the license of a file, e.g. CheckUsageWikiSense). 3. allow us to easily make changes to a set of templates all at once. 4. allow better translation integration 5. cut down on our maintenance work and avoid even more backlogged cats 6. make using and finding templates easier 7. generating lists of "official" licenses would be easy... among other things. I never got around to finishing it, but here's {{cc-meta}}. You can see it in action on User:Rocket000/Sandbox2. Now look at the source of my sandbox and see how simple it is to use. And that's only a fraction of all the templates it can generate. But the userfriendlyness is in the parameter logic. A good template is one where you don't need any documentation besides an example. If we do this for the main groups of licenses, will have only the 10 or 20 less used licenses to worry about (and custom user ones, of course). I need to brush up on my template building first, but I hope to start on this again soon. I can handle that part myself if you guys want to work on the approval process and all that. Rocket000(talk) 02:33, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

March 11

Copied from my talk page. Yann (talk) 08:57, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
On the English Wikipedia, there used to be a file called wiki.jpg that was used for various purposes including greetings. It is currently only used on one live page, but appears more often in page histories. Viewing these pages now means seeing the Cairo Institute of Human Rights logo in place of the Wikipedia one. Since it looks like the image has already been nominated for deletion, I won't do that, but I think that the file should be renamed at the very least unless it is being used somewhere outside the English Wikipedia and keeping it as wiki.jpg is important to that project (the logo is not used on any live page on the English Wikipedia at this time). Soap (talk) 07:55, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I put the Wiki.jpg into renaming pipeline. It has a wrong name. I assume the old Wiki.jpg was something resembling File:Wikipedia-logo.svg. if so than one should run delinker on English Wikipedia to swap them.--Jarekt (talk) 12:10, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the image's log, it is the third or fourth time that the filename was used for something entirely inapporpriate. For a couple years, it was Image:Arwi_characters.jpg. Maybe we should add this to the list of protected filenames? Carl Lindberg (talk)

New Village Pump image

My thanks to whoever chose the new Village Pump photo, a welcome replacement for the photo of a well. Does this photo change periodically? Davidt8 (talk) 14:27, 3 March 2009 (UTC)DavidT8

None of those look ideal. An idea for a competition: go and take a high-quality striking photograph of a village pump for us to use. Or, if you are an illustrator, draw one. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:31, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I like the 6th one, because it is clearly located in a town square, and looks more likely to have people gathering around. The first five seem to be private water pumps, unfit for social gatherings :) --Tryphon (talk) 19:26, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I had long thought that the VP image was not quite what we needed here. I have many times looked for a suitable replacement. Ideally the image should have the elements of a pump, a village square, and people gathered around it. The image I substituted was a bit of a compromise, but had the elements of a pump with buildings and space implying a village square, and a roof over the pump implying people spend time here. There are many good images of pumps, but no others have people gathered around or the implication of a meeting place. --Tony Wills (talk) 20:46, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I stumbled upon this image over at Wikipedia. Davidt8 (talk) 13:31, 8 March 2009 (UTC)Dthomsen8

Why not? Would symbolize the hot air that is being pumped here sometimes ;-). --Dschwen (talk) 21:55, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Davidt8 - thanks for the suggestion of the images, my opinion would be a couple thoughts here; How about an image that is a 'working' pump currently in use? These images all look like antiques, however this forum/pump is in active use, and it would be an excellent choice if the picture actually displayed splashed water on the ground around it indicating that it's been used recently? Just a thought. My grandparents used to have a really nice hand-operated pump at their property up in the mountains, however it certainly wasn't a community pump. I definitely would like to see the main image of this section of commons with a pump in it. Zul32 (talk) 21:31, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

First, the photo gallery was done by someone else. Second, a commons or square or plaza with people around a pump would be ideal, but we don't seem to have one. Perhaps one of the contributors who provided those actual pumps in squares could stage a photo with the pump and people using or around it. Just a thought. Davidt8 (talk) 01:05, 11 March 2009 (UTC)Dthomsen8

is a nice one with people actually using old style pump. --Jarekt (talk) 18:14, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

March 4

CheckUsage synchronization

Hi. There's probably something I don't know or understand about CheckUsage. All databases are now apparently up to date on the toolserver (yay), and yet I see "ghost" usages through CheckUsage. Is it normal? --Eusebius (talk) 21:17, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

One of the three toolserver database clusters has an outdated copy of the Commons database. I filed a bugreport to get it fixed. The cluster affected is S3. This cluster contains all smaller wiki's and some bigger wiki's like frwp and jawp. Multichill (talk) 20:30, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

March 6

Buscador de imagenes libres, Searcher of free images

Good morning, I want to know is there is any virtual searcher, like Google or Yahoo! but for images wich haven't copyright. Flickr isn't 100% efective...
than you very much!
and have a nice day

Why do we need consensus for that? AFAIR that page always said, that Commons is accepting 1.2 or any later version and now it says 1.2, 1.3 or any later version. These statements are completely equivalent, as the result is, that Commons is accepting content licensed under GFDL 1.2 or any later GFDL version. This includes 1.3. Regards, -- ChrisiPK(Talk|Contribs) 15:36, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Batch uploading ?

Hello, I have images of all the jôyô kanji like this one, sorted by reading. I think it could be useful to some wiki projects. Is there a good way to upload them all ? Thanks. --Ταελ_ (talk) 12:24, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

You can use an upload bot to do that. I can give you a hand. What amount of files are we talking about? Multichill (talk) 12:55, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Are they bitmaps or vector images? (I'd expect vectors to be more useful.) Railwayfan2005 (talk) 20:41, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Ok. Do you have the image information in a structured form? Makes batch uploading a lot easier. Substitution templates are useful. For example, i used User:Multichill/Starr for the Starr upload. Multichill (talk) 21:09, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

They're PNG, as the program I'm using for batch generating (NodeBox) isn't able to export to SVG. I don't have the image information in a structured form but I'll try to get it. --Ταελ_ (talk) 23:22, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I guess source/date/author/licence/category is the same for all images so a list of descriptions should be enough. Multichill (talk) 22:06, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I find it disturbing that a number of images were deleted in that deletion which corresponded directly to the example given by Godwin of an image that should not be deleted (a person wearing a Spider Man costume). I really think before we go closing any other deletion discussions of cosplayers we need to settle on a consistent policy, and not have the same fight about it every time. May I suggest creating a section in Commons:Fan art and discussing it on Commons talk:Fan art? Dcoetzee (talk) 03:55, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I certainly agree: despite both the community consensus and support from WMF legal representative, the deletion was carried through. Is there no stoping of copyright paranoia? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul PiotrusTalk 21:20, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Converting PDFs to raster images

Can someone suggest good software or online service that will convert any given PDF file (with vector or raster graphic included) to some kind of raster image (jpg, gif, png...)? Thanx!--Kozuch (talk) 10:40, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

ImageMagick gets the job done. It can convert pretty much anything to any format. –Tryphon☂ 10:44, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Other low tech approach is screen capture. If you can see it on the screen you can save it to a file and than crop it. --Jarekt (talk) 12:23, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure ImageMagic is good for me... I generally dont like command line interfaces. I used to do simple screenshots, but now I have a complex vector pdf file that is PD and really has high resolution. God I hate these situations, I usually end up googling for free tools which is a pain in the... Can you suggest a good non command-line tool?--Kozuch (talk) 19:34, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Generally speaking, you don't want to convert vector graphics to bitmap graphics, especially for Commons upload, no matter how complex they are. SVG or the original PDF would be more appropriate. What purpose do you have in mind? Dcoetzee (talk) 19:37, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I want to make use of U.S. Frequency Allocation Chart within Wikipedia. Sure I could upload the original PDF, but that would hardly display on Wikipedia page as image. You are right, converting it to vector (thus SVG) is a better idea. Can you help?--Kozuch (talk) 19:44, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

You can see my first attempt here... not really a complete success, but I'll get there. I used inkscape, you can import PDF and save as SVG, if you want to give it a try. –Tryphon☂ 20:00, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Nice... I made a hit in the meantime too with File:United States Frequency Allocations Chart 2003 - The Radio Spectrum.svg. Googling for "PDF to SVG" seems to give some nice results, I used PDF2SVG from PDFTron - the software seems malware free and they have even Linux version. The converted version displays fine in Inkscape (and is considerably smaller than your version), but Firefox and MediaWiki png convertor seem to have issues with its font sizes...--Kozuch (talk) 20:22, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

PS. Thanx for your effort - I moved your version to my file instance as it has more accurate license tag and tagged your upload as duplicate. Is there a page dedicated do PDF or SVG conversions or creations?--Kozuch (talk) 20:48, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

↵ Good, I've deleted my version now (I was going to ask you to check the license and author, but it's even better this way). About SVG, we have Commons:Transition to SVG and Help:SVG (didn't read it, but I hope it can be useful). Fonts are always a pain to handle with the wikimedia SVG engine; non-standard font don't render properly (they get substituted by another font, which usually turns out wrong), and small font sizes are often problematic too. The easy solution is to convert fonts to path (in Inkscape), but in this case it produces a 14MB file! –Tryphon☂ 21:49, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

There are other reasons to not convert to paths - it makes the image more difficult to edit (e.g. for translations). The best approach, albeit the most taxing one, is to change the font to supported one and then edit the image to make it look nice. It would be nice if we could persuade WMF to support more fonts. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:36, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Broken link for old versions

Wikimedia appears to have eaten an old version of an image file, which I need to report a bug in the rendering process. I worked around the bug that was shown by File:Mongolia-sums.svg, but clicking on the old file link (link) gives a 404 error? Is it possible to recover this image? User A1 (talk) 04:42, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Can't upload SVG

Awhile ago I uploaded a rainfall graph to enwiki (here). When I try to move it here I get a red error stating: This file contains HTML or script code that may be erroneously interpreted by a web browser. The graph is uploaded directly from the numbers I put in here, a service of the National Center for Education Statistics.

Appears I lied, I edited the file in InkScape to modify the coloring. Other than that, I don't believe there have been any mods. Is there a reason why the file would have been okay at enwiki, but not here? Thanks, §hepTalk 02:28, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

How are you trying to upload it here? Directly, or using CommonsHelper? -mattbuck(Talk) 02:41, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I succeeded in uploading the file after removing all Javascript from the source: File:Banaba rainfall average.svg; please change the information (name, upload date, license, etc.) according to your wishes. The SVG-parser has changed a lot since October 2008, I suppose the older version did not check for HTML and/or Javascript... - Erik Baas (talk) 03:24, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

The default MediaWiki setting doesn't seem to block text/ecmascript, only html and javascript. Maybe Commons added it to the blacklist but en.wp didn't. Rocket000(talk) 04:11, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I tried both directly and with helper, neither worked. Thanks for the help, where was the JavaScript? I'm curious to know if the website added it or if InkScape did. Thanks again, §hepTalk 19:46, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

The Javascript was added by the website; and you can see it when you open the SVG file with Notepad or another text-editor. - Erik Baas (talk) 19:57, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

The stuff wrapped in <script> tags? Hopefully I'll be able to identify this myself next time and save you guys the trouble. §hepTalk 21:04, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Flickr

Hello, searching about this image licence, I found there are many more files uploaded from this flickr account. But the problem is that among them there are several film frames (in commons, in commons, in flickr, in flickr, in flickr, etc.) that the user licences CC, what I doubt is legal (because those frames I am quite sure have copyright), and makes me doubt about the other. I'm not expert in Commons, so if this is not the correct place for this post, please let me know. Regards, Gons(¿Digame?) 22:02, 11 March 2009 (UTC).

Because the Flickr user demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of free licensing, I move that all images borrowed from this user be removed. Most of these are shots of celebrities, and I doubt even the low-quality ones are actually by John Griffiths. I'm also going to report him to Flickr. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:10, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

On further review, I really do believe that some of his images at least are genuinely taken by him. A great example is File:Gewurztraminer Riesling blended wine.jpg, which when viewed as part of the set [8], which includes many amateur personal photos, is most likely a genuine shot. I'm just going to kill the obvious celebrity shots. Dcoetzee (talk) 04:55, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I hate to say it but I jumped to conclusions - most of his celebrity shots are legitimate, taken during movie premiers and signings, as is obvious from photo sets like this. You can tell which ones are real shots by him because they're pretty amateur. Dcoetzee (talk) 05:16, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

March 12

Error creating thumbnail: Invalid thumbnail parameters or PNG file with more than 12.5 million pixels

Ah, that has already been done. You should change the font to one supported by the Wikimedia servers. --Dschwen (talk) 21:52, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Either you convert it to GIF (you'll have to upload it under a different name obviously), or slightly reduce the size of the image (4,422 × 2,826 would be the maximum). –Tryphon☂ 21:58, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the 12.5-million pixel limit applies to both GIFs and PNGs (and a GIF wouldn't be resized anyway in the current situation...). AnonMoos (talk) 22:43, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I ended up with a jpeg version which does not fail to create thumbnail finally... now I know how to convert PDF vector to JPEG at least - use FreeSVG@texterity.com for PDF2SVG, Inkscape for SVG2PNG and GIMP for PNG2JPEG! :D If I wasnt lame for shell tools, I might possibly save some time I guess. However, this 12.5 Mpix PNG limit does not seem to be very systematic to me... probably a hardware limitation?--Kozuch (talk) 22:13, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I uploaded new versions of both PNG and JPEG, I hope it's okay (converted using ImageMagick: convert frequency_allocations.pdf frequency_allocations.png; you should reconsider your opinion about command-line tools :-) –Tryphon☂ 23:05, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

...gotta return to Ubuntu again (currently back to using XP for too long to write about reasons) - convert under XP gives thousands errors while first try under Ubuntu is a 100% hit. Linux is simply productive for some areas...--Kozuch (talk) 15:55, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Excuseme, but I have other problem with this file, I know it 's under free license but I dont know wich license put .
I need the help of someone, excuseme again --MelParlez 19:15, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Done You already had a proper license, just in the wrong place. --Jarekt (talk) 19:58, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Most-wanted Iraqi playing cards

If it's not the right place for the question, I don't mind moving it somewhere else. So, I wonder, what's the copyright status of en:Most-wanted Iraqi playing cards. File:Saddam-AceOfSpades.jpg is on commons, while the rest of the set is uploaded in enwiki as a single FU file. The whole set seems to be produced and distributed by the US government, so it may be {{PD-USgov}}. On the other hand, it may fall under works produced by contractors exception. Maybe, the question has already been solved. Anyway, I'd be glad if someone clarifies the subject. --Blacklake (talk) 20:18, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

The image description at enwiki says The cards are works of the US Federal Government. However, the individual photographs are not the work of the United States government, but were taken by unknown authors. §hepTalk 22:08, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

but I want to know what software is the best for make cartes, what do you recommender me?

Learning

Excuseme again, but I would like can help much here, and because my principal intereset is perhaps the geography, I would want to know...how can I learn to draw cartes?--MelParlez 12:33, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi Mel, there is a very good French tutorial for making high-quality maps here on the French Wikipedia. As for software, most people use Inkscape for maps consisting of simple hand-drawn lines and shapes; if you want exact maps created from digitalised geographical database material, you will need to learn to use GIS software, such as GRASS GIS. If you need help in French, you could ask User:Sting, the person who wrote those tutorials, here or on fr-wiki; he is always very helpful. Fut.Perf.☼ 19:04, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I just found this site and it has lots of good images that can be some good icons on the Commons sisters. It is in public domain. What do you guys think about doing a tag license for it? Mizunoryu 大熊猫❤小熊猫 (talk) 01:14, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, is it commonplace on Commons to create tags for sources from which many images are imported? I thought they were mainly used for broader license categories. Dcoetzee (talk) 03:38, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Not sure what the threshold is, but I've certainly seen custom tags when a single resource is being used for hundreds of images. Generally such special purpose templates combine licensing with sourcing/attribution information to simplify use. Dragons flight (talk) 05:16, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Flickr Commons

Flickr Commons has lots of images such as this one with a license of "No known copyright restrictions". In each case this links to a statement from the organisation which put the image on Flick. The example I posted the link makes it sound like the images couldn't be uploaded onto commons - however I would have thought that for this image (and most others that I've seen) the copyright would have expired. Can anyone advise? The image I mentioned would be ideal for the Nantucket Railroad article on Wikipedia if it could be used. --zabdiel 15:43, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

The link you provide explicitly states Even though the images we have uploaded to The Commons on Flickr are in the "public domain" and thus not subject to copyright restrictions, these photos may be subject to other third party rights, such as rights of privacy and rights of publicity. You can actually stop reading after "public domain"; that means they are perfectly fine for Commons, with the {{PD-old}}{{Flickr-no known copyright restrictions}} license (I didn't know this one, thanks ViperSnake151). The rest is not copyright-related and works uploaded to Commons are only required to be free with respect to copyright. –Tryphon☂ 19:05, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia Hungary Picture Competition

Please help in translating the event and promoting it to those who might be interested in participating. We would be very happy to we receive as many submissions from as many interested people as possible.

March 15

Flickr tool - the little dictator

Hello, just curious but why is the otherwise very useful upload tool always opting for the largest picture? For example, File:Puente de Alcántara, Cáceres Province, Spain. Pic 03.jpg is certainly a nice panorama, but it almost knocked from my chair when I saw it was uploaded as 18 MB pic! (Just for perspective, this is the data space of 180 articles). I want to have the liberty to choose the size. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 22:12, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Commons always wants the largest image size possible to be uploaded; the Mediawiki software scales it down to suit our specific needs. 18 MB is not uncommon, and not a problem - with today's hard disks, that amounts to a cost of about 1/10 of a penny, which is negligible. If the full resolution is not uploaded, and we or a commercial content reuser later need a higher resolution image, we have no recourse. This also has benefits for editing, and can be cropped to produce images of included entities. Dcoetzee (talk) 22:33, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Alright, but isn't this unfair to all those users who still have a slow internet connection? Also, to be honest, I am bit worried about the Wikipedia project itself. If we have hundreds of thousand pictures of high resolution pics uploaded at Commons, won't that eat up the 6 million USD budget of WP, will it? I am not sure whether the responsible people do the right math here. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 13:16, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

With slow internet connection, do you mean for the uploader of the full res image or for the user seing a much smaller image embedded in an article? If it is the latter you are concerned about the MediaWiki software rerenders small size images, such then it is only a low res image you actually transfer when looking at an image on a page, and using your preferences you can even set the thumbnail image size to a lower value if the existing size causes too many problems on a slow internet connection. If you are thinking about it as an uploader, yes, then a slow internet connection is a nuisance, but only for the actual upload of the image, not subsequent views (unless you press the full res link on the image page). --Slaunger (talk) 13:25, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

It is official, do not worry about storage, upload maximum resolution!. Full stop. --Dschwen (talk) 14:40, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

As an addition the storage costs are very tiny compared to the traffic costs, so there is no need to upload low-res versions of images since the full-res version is only downloaded very few. —Wuzur 18:02, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Gun Powder Ma - Dont' worry about people downloading it... every time the image is used the software automatically re-sizes and compresses the image as appropriate. that way we get the best of both worlds at the expensive of a little bit of processing power. J.smith (talk) 20:42, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

March 14

Auto expire otrs pending

March 16

hello, I would like to read sometinghs about ortodontics, I am a dental tehnician and i don´t know where I can find books to read online

I don't think we have anything like that here. I think your best be would be to visit the nearest university that has a dental program and check our their library. J.smith (talk) 20:38, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

PD template in German Wikipedia

Hi. I would like to know if it is possible to adapt the template {{Bild-PD-Amtliches Werk}} from German Wikipedia here. Apparently, this template indicates the image is in Public Domain but there is no correspondance here. Moreover, the uploader tool does not recongize this template as a valid one (free source) for upload. Thanks, Malafaya (talk) 14:12, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

We can't, its a protected name, because "This template name is used on de.wiki, thus the CommonsHelper uses this name if the file has the template on de.wiki. However, creation of such a template on Commons is not recommended, as the de.wiki version is more generic than the Commons versions" ViperSnake151 (talk) 14:52, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Right after I posted this, someone added Horned melon to Cucumis metuliferus which doesn't make any sense to me. Is that the correct thing to do? What is the convention for these types of categories? It seems like total chaos to me, but perhaps I'm just not aware of the rhyme or reason. Kaldari (talk) 16:39, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Being bold, preparatory to a potential merge. The problem with these categories is that not all the Cucumis are melons (actually, I'm not sure I'd describe Horned melons as "melons" as culturally they're not something I'm familiar with as food). On the whole, you're right - it's chaos. Man vyi (talk) 16:54, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Please don't merge. It is not always easy, but we have that situation quite often: flax, cotton, hemp, cannabis, ... The Latin species name for pictures that details the plants and its fruits, the melon cats for the product that comes on the market, its cultivation, use in the kitchen, associated tools, recipes, presentation, packing, transport, folklore, decoration, in art ... And please document the categories to avoid the same question over and over again. --Foroa (talk) 18:33, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Ditto, the latin names follow a scientific categorisation taxonomy, the as food names follow a taxonomy derived from how it is cooked and eaten, hence the categorisation of fruits which are not strictly squashes as melons.KTo288 (talk) 10:35, 18 March 2009 (UTC) P.S. Most people will only know the common name for a fruit or animal not its scientific name.KTo288 (talk) 10:38, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Now don't misunderstand my intentions here... this is a terrific website!

Excuse me, for all those Irish lovers, and people who like to have group/company potlucks and get-togethers and frequent the pubs with a "pint in your fists"... What's going on here??!! Why isn't the picture of the day something at least remotely Irish related??

I'm disappointed that wikicommons missed the boat here. Wikipedia didn't even choose to have their featured article on St. Patricks day either... and - I'm not even Irish!

Sorry, but I'm rather new to this whole contributing/editing/publishing to the wiki world, but are there administrators involved here that vote or decide what tomorrow's (and the next day's, etc.) picture is going to be? If so, how can an entire panel of individuals completely miss this, and decide to go with some park in France as today's picture?

I'm part Irish, but I still have orchestra tonight because my conductor is Italian.--God'sGirl94 (talk) 18:47, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I never understood the whole St Patrick's Day malarkey. At uni they'd feed us special guinness sausages... but then i never understood the appeal behind heavy drinking either. My tastes are more in the orange reef way. -mattbuck(Talk) 22:55, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

No, that's not what he's saying at all. I think that he removed some emotive language from the description. If misogynistic were in a quote I'd be ok with it, but as it is I think leaving out that is probably best. The only thing I see that's been done wrong here is an edit war and a failure of communication. Please, talk to each other. -mattbuck(Talk) 03:06, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Something can always be done, and if we cooperate with each other sometimes even something good. Here is what I have done: I've changed the heading into "Tameing a Shrew" (it's the images we are discussing, right) and moved the name of the other user involved down into Adams text- Then I have created three pages here, here and here. Use these talkpages to try and reach an agreement on the wording. No changes in the disputed part of the description should be made before such an agreement has been established. New reverts will be followed by a protection of The Wrong Version.

The content discussion is really not Village Pump material, let's try to keep that at the imagetalks. And I really hope this does not escalate into a User problem. Best regards, Finn Rindahl (talk) 03:18, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

The long and the short of it is, only my name appears on these pages. The views he advocates - that this is a harmless jape - is going to be attributed to me, who only did the restoration because I thought that it was disturbing, but summed up problems people have with Taming of the Shrew and was a useful touchstone towards the historical treatment of women. What he writes is effectively putting views in my mouth that I disagree with, and I find this very uncomfortable. Adam Cuerden (talk) 09:03, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

No. He's not saying it's good or better. He's simply stating that such abuse is not unusual, even if the method is. -mattbuck(Talk) 11:58, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Translation help needed

Since a couple of months we use autotranslation at Commons. With this enabled users not only see the interface in their selected language, but also the templates. See for example {{Information}} in Dutch or Arabic. Users who set their language to something different than English will see these templates (statistics) and users who watch an image from a local wikipedia (example) will also see the templates in the local language. To have a template work like this it has to be converted. All but one of the most linked-to templates have been converted now. Now it's time to get these templates translated in as many languages as possible! You don't have to be a template wizard to do it. Every template should include some documentation on how to translate the template. Thank you, Multichill (talk) 15:50, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

That statistic is interesting. Low Saxon is not in the list - less than 100 persons using it (and better do not tell me the number, it can only disencourage me) -, but with 139 translations (according to my watchlist) Low Saxon is quite high in the list.

But what's really interesting, is the fact that the number of users with English set in the preferences is 2.5 times higher than the number of all other languages counted together. I guess we can take it for granted, that this does not reflect the real composition of our community. There must be tens of thousands of users who have set English in the preferences despite not being native speakers of English.

At the moment English is default and the software does not even ask you whether you want something else. At account creation there should be a selection box to change your language. And if a user with a SUL account navigates to Commons for the first time (and thus will be registered on Commons too) there could be some prominent message "change your preferred language now" (ideally a one-click solution).

By the way: English is at place 3 with translations? How do you count? Do you count templates ending in "/LANGCODE" in the template namespace? Then non-autotranslatable templates with the main template always being English will be counted as translations. Or what's the reason for English not being place 1 (although default on all templates)? --Slomox (talk) 19:32, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't the welcome template include something to easily set the interface language? I look for templates in the form templatename/language. Not auto translated templates don't have an /en page. The actual query is SELECT COUNT(*) FROM page JOIN templatelinks ON page_id=tl_from WHERE page_namespace=10 AND page_is_redirect=0 AND tl_namespace=10 AND tl_title= 'Translated_tag' AND page_title LIKE '%/en'. Multichill (talk) 20:20, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

bug in categories?

When I visit Category:Deletion requests July 2008 and I go to the second page, I see the same pictures. When I go back to the first page, I see no pictures at all but a strange duplication of the navigation links (the "200 previous" and "200 next"). When I visit Category:Deletion requests January 2009, I see only 579 pictures, although there are 1558 stated. Am I the only one to see that, or is there anything wrong? --Eusebius (talk) 17:20, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Something funny that I noticed already several times but difficult to repeat in a consistent manner (I don't see the same as you are reporting), so difficult to report. But first, never trust the counters as they get often completely wrong, especially when categories are changed by bots or templates. They tend to be corrected when the real count drops below the 200 (1 page size) or every n weeks or even months (no idea about the rule but I observed that already several times when changing templates that include a category). I can give you several examples, but the easiest are category:Duplicate, category:Other speedy deletions (now OK) and several categories in category:Non-empty category redirects. Empty categories that show a non zero counter tend to be corrected when an image is added to the category (I just did an additional test). Deletion and recreation of the category does not reset the counter. That's what some people will call experience, others call it frustration. It looks as for displays that have several pages, they go through a sorted list (offset starts with the name of the picture) but use the counter to determine how many pages there are. --Foroa (talk) 19:01, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

You are right that categories with less than 200 members are automatically corrected. The software always tries to get 200 category members to display, and if it can't find 200 it knows the real number and can fix the counts if they are incorrect. /Ö 19:40, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

For the july category more than 200 files use the same sort key. That will cause the problem you describe. It is possibly a bug in Template:Delete which use the name of the deletion request subpage as sortkey, but maybe there is a good reason for sorting like that (and it is only a problem when more than 200 files are in on deletion request). Incorrect file counts in categories were probably caused by bugzilla:17155. The cause of the problem is fixed, but to correct counts that are already wrong category has to be emptied or a system/server administrators needs to run some update script. /Ö 19:21, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

OK for the counting bug, minor issue. About the sorkey issue, I can reproduce it on another computer/another system, so you should see it as well, and it's clearly more than a counting problem. I've tried to make a list of the images in the category with a pywikipedia bot: infinite loop, diverging memory usage, it had to be killed. I really don't think it's the fault of the Delete template, it should be possible to share a sort key. Ö, you seem to know the problem better, maybe you want to file a bug? --Eusebius (talk) 20:34, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

A proposal to relax the rules on fan art

I have made a proposal to replace the current policy page on fan art with something more legally correct and I hope useful. There are several outstanding Deletion Requests that this might be relevant to. Please help improve the wording. It's at Commons:Fan art/Proposal. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 19:17, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Video problems

Do anyone else have problems with File:NRKBeta forklarer BitTorrent.ogv in Cortado (Java)? It woked well the first couple of times i played it, but it now shows a black screen and says "unknown type: video/ogg." I can still play it in mplayerplug-in, and I can play other Ogg theora videos in Cortado. --Kjetil_r 22:20, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

March 19

Index functionality/links broken

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:PD-self -- The page at the preceding address has an "index" section. If you click any of the lowercase letters, they all take you to the page for "~" (the final category). Even if these index groupings are not supposed to be case-sensitive, the lowercase "a" link should at least take you to the same page that uppercase "A" does. At worst, there are 26 index entries which cannot be reached directly, and in a category of almost 600,000 items, paging through them manually 200 at a time is not exactly practical. If other pages' indexes use this same mechanism, they might all be broken! Could someone please fix this? TIA. I would if I knew how.

Signing this, so it will be archived. Rocket000(talk) 02:40, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

File renaming

The long awaited file renaming feature has now been enabled. See here. Brion has enabled image moving on all projects with the default permissions limiting it to admins only. Adambro (talk) 23:21, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Question: How does this affect embedding in other projects? --Martin H. (talk) 23:49, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Yes, if you choose to leave a redirect then the old name will still work in other projects. I suppose we might wish to consider whether we would like a bot to go around updating the names that are used on each project. I think it would be useful to do so. Adambro (talk) 23:52, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I was coming here to tell everyone the good news, but Adambro was faster :) Platonides (talk) 23:58, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

This is much better because all the histories will kept; how is the renaming process now, is it same as before? is the MediaMoveBot still working? could this feature also be enabled for trusted users? ■ MMXXtalk 07:49, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Morning. In the first case, purging the page on Wikipedia has sorted it so that problem would resolve itself. As you note, it seems impossible to delete the redirect for the file itself rather than just the page. It would appear that even where, as in this case, a redirect is deleted, the old filename can still be used because the name is still being redirected. I'm not sure whether this is intended. Adambro (talk) 10:39, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Comment Further to the above, it is worth noting that if you move a file for a second time, whilst the page double redirect will work, the file double redirect won't. See w:User:Adambro/test for an example. I assume that ideally it would make sense for both types of redirects to work when an image is moved and so I'll raise an issue on bugzilla if I can remember how to. Adambro (talk) 10:59, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Has there been any discussion whether image redirects should be deleted after moving an image? Links in WP pages can be changed, but redirect deletions could cause quite a lot of broken links from external sites. There are lots of sites on the net that use images from Commons and link to the description pages. --Kam Solusar (talk) 19:20, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

March 17

Guidance on categories and sub-categories

My confusion about how the categories work is illustrated by Category:Buildings in Philadelphia. I do not understand how the categories work, and how new categories are created. This page shows particular buildings such as City Hall, but also categories of buildings, such as museums. I have a large number of photos of Philadelphia buildings, which I would like to add to Wikimedia Commons. I want a better plan for uploading these photos, and for that matter, taking new ones to be added.

Should I just go ahead and add photos of buildings of all kinds to the Buildings in Philadelphia category, with a sub-category only when there is an existing sub-category, such as skyscrapers or museums? When there are a sufficient number (how many?) of photos in a potential new category, such as libraries, or prisons, then a new category could be created, but how would all the existing photos get added to the new category?

Alternatively, can a new category be created with just a few photos to start out? For example, I have a lot of photos of libraries, including many Free Library of Philadelphia branches, but also private libraries such as the German Society of Pennsylvania. There also might be overlap. The Mutter Museum has a library, but also exhibits, and so does the Rosenbach Museum.

Please provide some guidance for me before I make the effort to add a lot of photos. Davidt8 (talk) 13:35, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi. A few remarks that might answer some of your questions:

Feel free to create sub-categories when you deem it appropriate (for a significant building or building category, for instance). Try to find other possible parent categories for your new subcategory (for instance, a sub-category for a Philadelphia Citibank building would be in both Category:Buildings in Philadelphia and Category:Citibank, and also maybe other ones, giving its building date or its architect, for instance).

Yes, it is ok to have a category with only a few images, as soon as the category makes sense. Just please don't create categories for which you don't have pictures right now. To recategorize the existing photos, you can 1) do it manually, 2) use the HotCat gadget (you can enable it in your settings) on each file, 3) use the cat-a-lot gadget on the category view (again, see settings/gadgets), 4) ask somebody to check the list of categories you've just created (some people will be happy to help) or 5) do nothing (please don't pick up this one!).

If in doubt about what you've just done, ask here for somebody to have a look at it.

Both of those answers are helpful. Now my plan will be to add a new sub-category Libraries below Category:Buildings in Philadelphia, and add photos of Philadelphia libraries. I need to figure out how to get libraries such as the Mutter or Rosenbach also into the sub-category Museums, and to be careful about historic buildings which are libraries or museums. 71.225.51.30 17:53, 19 March 2009 (UTC)Davidt8

I added the suggested Gadgets, and set some other preferences. I will try them out as I add additional photos of Buildings in Philadelphia. Davidt8 (talk) 14:27, 20 March 2009 (UTC)Davidt8

Local whitelist and mujweb.cz

Can somebody add www.mujweb.cz at local whitelist? I uploaded File:Autobusy plzen3.jpg and I made I mistake in source. It is http://www.mujweb.cz/www/mhd_jama/galery/2mesta/plzen3.jpg not http://www.mujweb.cz/www/mhd_jama/galery/2mesta/plzen2.jpg, but I can´t change it. It wrote me that mujweb.cz (It is Czech free hosting) is banned by antispam filter. --Mirabilis (talk) 22:59, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Looking now, but I wonder how you got the link there in the first place... is upload not checked against the blacklist? — Mike.lifeguard 15:57, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Upload is not checked against the blacklist, I just tested on the testwiki. -- Prince Kassad (talk) 17:34, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

March 20

Buildings in Philadelphia Incorrectly Identified

So far, I have found two photographs in Category:Buildings in Philadelphia which are incorrectly identified. I know that I can add photographs of those two buildings to the category, with correct identifications of each building.

After I have done that, how (or should) I correct the information for the two incorrectly identified buildings? Should I try to contact the original contributors? Can I post correct information with those photographs? Please tell me how to proceed. Davidt8 (talk) 01:00, 20 March 2009 (UTC)Davidt8

Are you sure? If yes, edit the description of the file, and in the edit summary put a polite explanation of you reason- it will appear on the uploaders watchlist.

A file name is just a file name and could refer to a group of buildings- so leave well alone.

If you must: read Commons:FAQ and tag the page with {{Rename|New_name.jpg|specific reason --signature}} on a file description page - it may or may not happen but you have done your bit. --ClemRutter (talk) 09:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I am very sure. This morning I went to the two buildings and took photographs, which I will upload and carefully identify. I doubt that the file names will need to be changed for the existing photographs. Please tell me more about the uploaders watchlist. Davidt8 (talk) 14:17, 20 March 2009 (UTC)Davidt8

It seems to me that single images should be in a higher category, and not in a category all their own. See my questions above about Philadelphia, Buildings in Philadelphia, etc. I did get two answers, and I posted a reply with my plan for posting more photos of libraries in Philadelphia. I am still learning how to add new categories to existing photographs, using Philadelphia building photographs. Naturally it is easier to work on my own city, which I know well and can go make more photographs as needed. Take a look at the answers above and read the various pages about categories. Perhaps others who are more experienced than I am will also answer you. 71.225.51.30 01:46, 20 March 2009 (UTC)Davidt8

No minimal size for categories. Do not assume that others will make the categories. Do not assume that another photograph of the subject of the image will not appear in the future. The nodes for categories make putting images in a higher category somewhat of a mess. For instance, a building might be subcategorized into the city it was built in, the architect who built it and the year in which it was built. Easier to subcat the category than to put the same categories on all photographs of the image and also assume that the next uploader of an image of this building will know to put all of those categories on it. If you are kind enough and interested enough to research your photograph that well, then add the research to the category instead. -- carol (talk) 01:51, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Often, there are two or more ways to present information on wikis. To me, the uploader is using two methods to do the same job. The page is rarely needed- it is better just to use Categories. It is OK to have a single image category- as in future another editor may add more images- but that category must be contained in another category. Here that seems to be true. A single image page seems to be a waste of time- and will lead to redundancy. Here, the uploader could make a page for mountains of South Tyrol- and include the best image of each of these mountains- but personally I wouldn't. I would try to add the Commons:Geocoding tag to each image. That is more useful--ClemRutter (talk) 01:58, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

To me, a subcategory is preferred (even when you have only one single picture on it) whenever you think that it would be nice to have more pictures from exactly the same subject, there is a good chance to obtain new pictures for that subject in the coming year or it there is a good chance that someone searches for exactly the same topic (for example when there is somewhere a wikipedia article on it). The system overhead for categories and galleries is negligible compared to the system resources needed for an image.--Foroa (talk) 06:51, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments.
So may I summarize: a single image category is ok, but a pagegallery with a single image is not the best idea. If there is a category, there is no need for a corresponding and redundant pagegallery. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 09:14, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Not too tough in cat/gallery-questions

IMHO: Yes to your first, but (more of a) No to your second conclusion if you mean gallery by "page". If correctly built, a gallery is not at all redundant to the corresponding cat; see Commons:Galleries#Galleries vs. categories.--Túrelio (talk) 09:20, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I meant gallery. Thanks for the link. The concern about redundancy was not on the images, but on the short explanations which could exist in (to be realistic) a dozen of languages. And, for single-image galleries Commons:Galleries#When_to_create_a_gallery will apply: A single image does not make for a very good gallery. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 10:15, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

In the latter, you are totally correct. In general, one should not be too strict in these issues, because this has too often incited bloody edit/cat-wars.--Túrelio (talk) 10:23, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Deleted?

There seems to be some kind of error when deleting files that were moved while we had our short-term ability to do so. See File:Hermerocallis flava (3).jpg. I deleted it but it won't go away. Rocket000(talk) 02:37, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I can't see the file. Are you still having this issue? Pruneautalk 10:49, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's a red link now so I guess the problem is resolved. Rocket000(talk) 01:16, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I had this problem yesterday with a redirect that I unintentionally left behind when moving a file. I deleted the redirect but it continued to function. Purging pages didn't help. In the end I recreated it as a non-redirect (i.e. with some nonsense text) then deleted it again. That nailed it. Hesperian 12:35, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Views sought

In an effort to shortcut any problems and a wasted drive- I contacted a museum in the UK with a nominal entry charge, to confirm that I would be able to take photographs of a small part of one of their exhibits. They were very helpful- and explained that I would be welcome to take as many phots as I wanted, provided that they were not for commercial use. A second attempt got the answer that provided they were for personal use. Mmm. So- were I to take the images- how to I license them. I am seek a discussion her because this one has flummoxed me. Once I have a few of your ideas I can formulate a letter to the trustees to see if we can establish an agreement which can be used at a neighbouring museum who won't allow cameras. Ideas please. --ClemRutter (talk) 09:33, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi, just don't bother. If the works are PD, they have no right to limitate the use of the picture. They can only put restrictions on what people do in the museum. You may want to have a look here, it is nicely explained I think. --Eusebius (talk) 10:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Great link. I am up for the challenge. Anyone else with a POV.--ClemRutter (talk) 14:25, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Eusebius is right, if the artwork is public domain, than photos of the artwork are also public domain. The museums will claim otherwise, but you just have to ignore them. Feel free to tell them it is for personal use. Just don't tell them that your personal use is posting them on Wikipedia :) Kaldari (talk) 22:56, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

...then photos of the artwork are whatever license the photographer chooses it to be. I'm sure that's what you meant, but I just wanted to clarify that. –Tryphon☂ 23:00, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

No, according to the WMF position (provided I understand it well), if it is a PD 2D work, then the license of the photograph has to be PD (on Commons). If it is a 3D artwork, then the photographer can choose the license. --Eusebius (talk) 23:11, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

You're right, that's the exception to the rule. In general, the photographer is the copyright holder of the photograph; but in the case of a faithful reproduction of a 2D work, we consider there is no originality raising from the photographer's work, so it doesn't create a new copyright: the picture is in the public domain, just like the subject. –Tryphon☂ 23:57, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

28,000 images

Imre Solt, a great photograph in Dubai. Has released all his photos as CC-BY-SA version 3.0 . The images can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/imresolt/ . These are many photos and with my internet connection I can't upload them in weeks. The images are mostly about construction advances in dubai and are very educational and needed in Category:Burj Dubai. The otrs permission ticket is:

TIFFs and JPEG versions

In light of current technical limitations preventing the construction of JPEG and PNG thumbnails of TIFF files, I thought it might be a good idea to extend the approach I once advocated for having a PNG and JPEG of the same image, as described at Commons:Images_for_cleanup#PNG_photos_that_require_a_JPEG_version. In other words, the TIFF would receive tags pointing to a JPEG version to use in articles, and the JPEG version would have a tag indicating not to make edits based on it. You can see images using this approach in Category:PNGs with JPEG versions. Thoughts? Dcoetzee (talk) 23:53, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

March 21

White House copyright notices embedded in metadata

I just noticed that the White House has been embedding a copyright notice in the metadata of some of their images, like this one, which states:

FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY UNLESS AUTHORIZED BY THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS OFFICE

I haven't seen it yet in the smaller images which are resized.

This strikes me as a little odd given that as US government employees, the White House photographers' works are PD and for our purposes it shouldn't or doesn't affect uploading such images onto here since if someone does decide to use such images for non-personal use that is between them and the White House Press Office. I am not aware also of how the average user might be aware of such a copyright notice by just viewing an image normally on their computer, but just wanted to bring this up since this is the first time I've seen such copyright assertions from US government produced photos. --BrokenSphere 00:33, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

The US government can own copyrights, but it's rare. I'd suspect that this is a spurious copyright claim. Unless we have some reason to believe that the these pictures were taken by independent photographers and are being licensed? J.smith (talk) 01:06, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Modified classical engraving

I recently was looking at images of Wenceslas Hollar, and noticed that this image appears to be a hand-modified copy of this version. If you can examine it closely, you can see extra letters squeezed into the text at the bottom, and the new curtain cord is translucent, showing the clouds behind it. My natural conclusion is that this image is a copy that was modified somewhere along the way by another illustrator, probably long ago. What I wonder is whether this sort of thing is common and how it should be handled for the purposes of Commons. Dcoetzee (talk) 01:25, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Annotations, corrections etc. are not uncommon for old texts. On Commons we should keep both, I think. We keep the original, obviously, and the altered version could be used to illustrate articles about alterations on old texts for example. Of course we need to clearly mark what's the original and which is not. --Slomox (talk) 15:31, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

More than once he had made a rather earnest plea for deletion (for example here: [10]) that seemed credible to me. As the images were not used on any project page, I deleted all except one that had been protected by Ra'ike. --Túrelio (talk) 10:07, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

You can't revoke the GFDL, and a plain rock is not copyrightable, so there is no copyright issue. However it sounds like the original uploader may have exposed themselves to a contractual situation. They are recent uploads, and especially if not used, the request seems reasonable. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:51, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Flickr users categorized?

Is there an easy way to tell which images came from the same Flickr account? Mike R (talk) 14:17, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Special:LinkSearch. Used for example in Commons:Questionable Flickr images, search http://www.flickr.com/photos/"ID(num or alph)" and without the www because one of the bots didnt transfer it with www http://flickr.com/photos/"ID(num or alph)". The .../photo/... link is for images photostreams, the .../people/... link is for the profile. --Martin H. (talk) 15:32, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

PDF thumbnails

It could be possible, since it's very easy, using convert from ImageMagick, to get such thumbnails… Now the thing is I'm not a developer, and there must be a reason why it's doesn't activated (yet). →Ditithepenguin — 22:36, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

March 13

tiff support

Brion has enabled the uploading of tiff files to Commons. This is important for the restorationists because only the files that are available in a loss less format can be restored. It is now possible to upload files that are upto 100MB in size. Currently our biggest file is 680MB. The best practices for restorations have it that you also safe files prior to changes that cannot be reverted. In this way someone can improve on the result. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 00:40, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

For the GNU free world (which I think is here) tiff is hardly the best format for losslessness. Ever work with PNG and GNU software? -- carol (talk) 03:11, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

This has to do with best practices for restorations. At that GNU does not feature. Please do not insult people's intelligence. GerardM (talk) 07:18, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the information, Gerard, a great advance for Commons, I strongly support the arguments in meta:Restoration.wikimedia.org: TIFF is an established standard in archiving, the enabeling of TIFF makes Commons more attractive. --Martin H. (talk) 07:34, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Not really sure what the point was, since TIFF is less of a "standard" than a looose agglomeration of diverse semi-compatible features, so that it's pretty much guaranteed that there are TIFF files out there that any particular application can't handle, and there are few concrete advantages over PNG... AnonMoos (talk) 11:47, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

That's great. It would have been helpful if this was available 2 weeks ago when we got a request for upload at en.wiki for 7 images from the Historical American Buildings Survey that then required converting 20mb tiffs to 4mb jpgs. :Þ -Andrew c (talk) 18:15, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

What was the weight of the files after their conversion to lossless (if that was considered by and important to the image format experts at english.wikipedia) png? -- carol (talk) 21:24, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Having observed the not entirely stable definition of "what is a tiff" over the last few years, I suspect that wikimedia has just asked for many more headaches and problems than it really intended to do. Here is a question, is tiff transparency supported and what about layered tiff? -- carol (talk) 18:28, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't know, but now we can more efficiently duplicate LoC's efforts! I'm not sure if I'm being sarcastic or not. But it's going to suck having to download them and open them in GIMP or whatever just to view the images. And unlike PDFs, I don't know of any free light-weight TIFF viewer. If MediaWiki generated PNG thumbnails like they do for SVGs, then maybe it could be useful. Rocket000(talk) 20:51, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, this feature is definitely not for final version Wikipedia images. It's just to make life easier for our restorationists (so that they don't have to email TIFFs to each other any more). Kaldari (talk) 21:54, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Copies of 2D works of art : suggestion

Hello,

I'm working on the french wikipedia, essentially about pre-Columbian civilizations, since 2005, and if I've just discovered now the PD-Art template which means, if I've understood it well, that I can upload to Commons any copy of precolombian codices or 16th century portraits I can find on internet or scan from books.

Don't you think that it means there's insufficient information, on Commons and Wikipedia, about what can be uploaded or not? I think it could be useful to create an informative template that could be inserted in the introduction of all pages and categories dedicated only to 2D works of art previous to 1930's.

It's just a sub-cat to Category:Number Shape System. Of course, that doesn't answer your question ;-) IMHO this classification is quite well-designed and can be useful for designers etc. Usually a user does take so much effort because something was missing when he/she needed it. So, I don't see a problem with that.--Túrelio (talk) 08:56, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

We have to draw a line somewhere. I would have no idea where to draw a meaningful line, if we allowed any resemblance categories at all. The only line that can be easily defended is: "no resemblance categories at all". Any other line would be arbitrary and opens the gates for Category:Shapes resembling User Slomox style categories... --Slomox (talk) 14:44, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

We have to draw a line somewhere - may I ask why? Obviously it can't be the few bytes needed for the cat-names.--Túrelio (talk) 16:04, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Commons is in the first place for visual media, so it is normal that we have "visual" categories. Moreover, the more you hide your topics in deep category systems, the more such visual categories become necessary. Don't be surprised to see categories for blond women with green eyes, yellow cars, red cars in the snow, fuzzy cityscapes, misty athmospheres, ... I would be curious to look into Category:Shapes resembling User Drork although that might be very much POV and insulting. --Foroa (talk) 15:29, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Is there a process (automated or otherwise) to move images to Wikipedia?

This is in regards to File:Ernest Noel.jpg, discussed at w:Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Noel Park. Basically, I am uncertain if the picture is public domain in United Kingdom (due to their law that all private creations are based on 70 years pma unless it cannot be reasonably ascertained the author's identity, {{PD-UK-unknown}}); I was thinking of using age to declare it {{PD-UK-known}}, but like the template says, it requires a known identity, but a 30-year-old photographer in 1883 would only be 87 in 1940... The Parliamentary site states that its portraits belong to Dodds (who could possess records on who took the photo). As it is, it seems safer to move this image to Wikipedia because it is definitely {{PD-1923}}; so, is there a process to do this? Ideas? Jappalang (talk) 10:47, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Unless I'm mistaken, if the image was published in the U.S. before 1923 it would be eligible to be hosted on Commons, regardless of the fact that it was also published elsewhere and even (in this case) originated elsewhere. - Jmabel ! talk 19:25, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

The PD-US-1923 is only allowed on Commons if the image originated in the US since commons requires US and source country. Unless I missremember en.wiki allows all PD-US-1923 independent of source country thoug. /Lokal_Profil 00:35, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Editing digital photos before uploading

I have been editing some digital photographs of Philadelphia buildings before I upload them. Sometimes I brighten them, but more often all I do is some cropping. I know how to do more extensive edits, such as removing sun glare from windows or bits of trash from the sidewalk, but so far I haven't needed to actually do any of those things. I use Paint Shop Pro 6 and sometimes Irfanview 4.21 for editing.

Since this is all my own work, do I need to disclose any of this editing when uploading photos? If so, how would I do that? Davidt8 (talk) 21:43, 21 March 2009 (UTC)Davidt8

If you wish to, you may use the {{RetouchedPicture}} template to indicate the existence and manner of retouching. It's purely optional though. I also recommend uploading the original image first, followed by the touched up version; this allows other to touch it up differently later, if they think they can do a better job. Dcoetzee (talk) 03:00, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

In my mind there is a distinct difference between the kind of retouching your talking about and falsifying a scene. Minor retouching is expected and unremarkable... adding new elements or removing important elements is something to be remarked. The first kind of retouching is optional to report, the second kind will get an image deleted if it's not disclosed. J.smith (talk) 15:36, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

March 22

Village pump heading image deletion request.

There is a deletion request for the image File:Aylsham.JPG and I like it, and see no reason to delete it. Earlier in March, 2009, there was a discussion on this page about changing the heading image, but no decision was reached. Meanwhile, let's keep this image, and consider whether a different image might be more appropriate. Can someone tell me how to recover the earlier section? Davidt8 (talk) 15:26, 22 March 2009 (UTC)Davidt8

It was a silly request, and it would have been kept immediately if the nominator had listed it on the daily listings. Kept now. –Tryphon☂ 15:40, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

New Village Pump image is the heading in the March 2009 archive. Can we please revive the discussion of changing the heading image? Davidt8 (talk) 15:47, 22 March 2009 (UTC)Davidt8

geograph.co.uk

Is there a quick way to tx tens of CC-BY images from geograph.co.uk. They are a friendly bunch who label their images clearly with a CC license and provide one of our templates for each image but it is still tedious. What I was hoping for was a commonist style solution- or a well explained shell script that could be run under linux. --ClemRutter (talk) 19:37, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Personally I don't use that tool because it seems there is no ability to change the filename from what it comes up with. I tried it recently and ended up with File:Freight Train Rolling By - geograph.org.uk - 793159.jpg which I didn't think was particularly helpful. I don't like having to rely on Geograph contributors to come up with a descriptive name because often they don't. I suppose I could just ask Magnus to consider putting an option to specify a name but I can't say I'm that fussed to bother really. It doesn't take that long to upload them manually. Adambro (talk) 20:09, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Remember to use the {{geograph}} licence rather than just plain CC-BY-2.0 as it allows proper linking and stuff. -mattbuck(Talk) 20:22, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, I am hooked up to Magnus's tool. It works. The images I am chasing are well labelled so that isn't too relevant (yet). It works for one off images. I am however chasing one particular photographer who has produced tens of good images (I am still working on sites such as List of mills in Stockport which is empty at the moment) so a batch approach would be really useful. Still, if anything better comes along I willing to give it a test drive.--ClemRutter (talk) 08:59, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Have we made any considerations to create templates or tools to grab files from the German Geograph yet? Nanonic (talk) 20:51, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Not yet it seems. This definitely needs some work. Like Geograph British Isles, this new project will no doubt be very useful. We either need to create a new template or add some parameters to the current {{Geograph}} template so that the links can be correct. We should also probably categorise these images separately. This needs discussing and completing as soon as possible before we find images start getting uploaded from this new project using the tempate which refers to the wrong project. As it stands, the helpfully provided Wiki markup provided for uploading images to Commons uses the Geograph template so once we decide what to do, they'll need to be provided with the updated markup required. Adambro (talk) 15:23, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

WikiVoc (SVG project)

Note: you are welcome to create one illustration right now :]

Hello,

I lauched the WikiVoc project. That's really easy : choice an English word, and draw it in SVG. Conventions and tool are show on WikiVoc page. That's really funny to draw, just need a dozen of minutes for each item. For people interested to improve their SVG skills, that's a really good pratice :] So : Contributors welcome !

This is great! I can't contribute but I really think we need more drawings of everyday objects and situations. Samulili (talk) 10:42, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

The project sounds great, but please do not put the English word directly in the image. That makes the images much less usable for projects in other languages (e.g. for a Dutch-French teaching book). --Slomox (talk) 14:24, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm aware of this issue. But I came to the conclusion that first, a script deleting the text will be easier to provide and more secure that a script adding it. Second, most teaching all go using English as basis. A Chinese student learning Spanish will use English to do so, a French learning Japanese will use English etc. Third, the picture talk by itself, so only the learned language have really to appear, in text format, under the image. Thus, English is always helpful, even if not always need.

But the project is still starting, and I'm still thinking about such issues. ;] Yug(talk) 22:01, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Why do you think everybody needs to understand English in order to learn another language?? I really think there should be at least a version of each file available with no text. I'm not part of the project though, and not demanding anything. I only give my personal opinion here. --Eusebius (talk) 22:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

axe

une hache

most teaching all go using English as basis That's partly true for "exotic" languages, where few learning materials are available, but not for any of the major languages. But Wikimedia is about creating learning materials, so it's not good to use the lack of materials as an argument.

a script deleting the text will be easier to provide and more secure that a script adding it You can easily use the normal image captions to show the translation, both or just in one language. Whatever you like. See on the right. I'd say: don't put the text in the image at all. --Slomox (talk) 22:40, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

The issue of text in images is much less important for SVGs that for PNGs or JPEGs, because it can be easily modified (please do not convert to outlines or do anything that messes up editability of text though). Dcoetzee (talk) 03:03, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it can even be auto-translated in SVGs. It is XML-based. We don't allow scripting in SVGs but that's one of it's key benefits. Rocket000 (talk) 08:54, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

So can plain text in SVG files be easily localized on Commons yet or not? ¦ Reisio (talk) 12:33, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Not yet. And probably not for a long long time. So I guess that's not an argument. :) I just like SVGs... Rocket000 (talk) 14:28, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

But what's the reason to put the caption in the image (instead beneath) at all? --Slomox (talk) 13:10, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Keep united:

Teachers will use these image if they are ready to use directly. Yes, I want merge the Voc data and the Pic data in one unique image file, creating a guideline, ready to print, and not easy to corrupt. Thus, that's totally clear: 1. that's a teaching material with meaning below the pic ; 2. the teacher know the associated meaning ; 3. if need, he add himself the wished translation, and English is there to ease him this task :].

Blank versions

I guess that a bot can easely set the word color's opacity to 0 (zero), thus 'hiding' the English word and providing a 2nd blank set. This blank set should stay an additive possibility. Work dirrectly to provide a blank set will be confusing for teachers and non-wikipedians. Voc (associated definition) will be store in text format, in an associated text file, and image in a directory of file. This, is want need programmers. Not teachers.

I'm French, had learn English, and Chinese. I taught French to Chinese students. When I/they see a pic, I/they need its meaning write down below it. For Chinese students they needed both: a. English/Chinese, to be sure what we are talking about; and b. French, to learn the new word. For my courses, the English had never arm. But 'lost a student in space', because he just see a pic in front of him and don't know if we are talking about "Red" or "Axe", this is confusing.

My conclusion:

We should work to a basic, comprehensive, ready to print, Pic-English set of files. That's the ready and printable English illustrated dictionary (:en: = the most need). Stupid SVG bots will then be able to generate more adaptative blank copies, or other language copies. Yug(talk) 18:44, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Please include something like “en” or “English” in the names of the files whose primary language is English. --AVRS (talk) 19:43, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeap. I will manage this tomorrow. I need first to know how, on wikipedia, extract 'egg' from the full name File:WikiVoc-egg.svg . O.o one idea ? 19:55, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

If we can't easily localize text inside SVG, including the name so is a horrible mistake. Even if we could easily localize the text, it's hard to imagine not having the text separate still being silly. A move for images of every word (or even just noun) is a good idea, but not like this. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:17, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Done; blocked 1 day; please post problems of this sort on the proper subpage of COM:AN. The people who usually do this sort of thing watch that page. Walter Siegmund(talk) 01:59, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Aliasing?

Hi, I notice a change in the quality of the images as used in the articles on Wikipedia. They are usually down-scaled images from commons, and they now show distortion artifacts that could be caused by aliasing. Did something recently change is this area? Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 12:25, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

It would help if you had some examples. TheDJ (talk) 13:00, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Considering the response, I suppose this is not the place to ask this. Does anyone know where to place this question? Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 21:35, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Downscaled images receive slight extra-sharpening to allow better viewing as thumb. If the original is already been heavily sharpend this in some cases gives not so nice results. Most "normal" images look better. -- smial (talk) 12:50, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Smial, but the change in quality I notice is of a more recent date, let's say in the last month. Jan Arkesteijn (talk) 20:22, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, I got an odd question/situation

Im an American living in Mexico City. One day way back in September, while surfing the Web, I came across the web site for the president of Mexico. At that time, I was doing a LOT of work on Commons and English Wikipedia about Mexico. On a whim, I wrote a message on the president's website stating that getting good articles written and photos published would help promote the country. I also asked for some old photos of some buildings in the center of Mexico City, like the Cathedral. Then I forgot about it. Imagine my surprise today to find an envelope for me from the Mexican government with a disk with 6 photos from 1906 to 1922!!!!! However, upon reading the documents, it does not appear I have permission to upload these photos into Commons.... yet. The documents I received are an inventory and a application form to get permission to publish the photos.

So what do I do now? One of the things they want is something stating that I am a representative of Wikimedia... I dont know if I am or could be. Id be willing to scan and email the documents I received but I dont know who to send them to. Leigh Thelmadatter — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thelmadatter (talk • contribs) 00:12, 2009 March 21 (UTC)

I dont know. I have asked User:Bastique about it; maybe he knows how and with whom to follow through with this if you judge the photos worth the trouble. Lupo 16:05, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I think so. These are old photos of Mexico's most iconic structures. Besides, if we start with this, we could set up a process to get more. Im willing to act as go-between as I live in Mexico City.Thelmadatter (talk) 01:09, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Flickr upload bot question

I've only just started using Flickr upload bot, and was wondering how long I need to give it before becoming impatient. I made a request on 20 March 2009 for an upload and it still hasn't gone through yet. The bot seems to have found the license to be okay so that doesn't seem to be the problem. Should I give it another day or so, or reupload the image?KTo288 (talk) 19:58, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

When i use the FlickR upload bot, my images usually upload within an hour.. If your image hasn't uploaded within a day you should contact brian here [[16]] and let him know your token ID for the image and that it hasn't uploaded.. --Ltshears (talk) 14:09, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I was wondering if it was unusual to take more then a day.KTo288 (talk) 17:23, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

It used to upload the images immediatly, but then the bot went down for a while. and now that it is back up it takes forever to upload the images. Not sure why, but i know it can take a while.. --Ltshears (talk) 19:14, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I have always used Flickr2Commons. Don't people generally agree that this is a better way of doing it? Richard001 (talk) 09:53, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Would you please provide a link? --Eusebius (talk) 10:44, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

thumbnail bug?

I recently uploaded a rather big panorama and there seems to be some problem with the creation of the relative thumbnail. When I try to view the thumbnail directly, I get the following error messages:

Proposed project: Image Echo

I'm not entirely sure where the right place to propose this. In short, occasionally I run across an article that has two or more language versions, where some of them have images and some of them have no images. In the case where the images are from Commons, they can easily be replicated across the other language versions; I've often done this for example with portraits in biographies. I think it would be useful to run a script to systematically locate cases like this and replicate the image. What do you think? Dcoetzee (talk) 22:57, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Something like this would be good. I often upload new photos and add them to en.wikipedia, but I would like if there was some way other languages could be notified about the new image, especially when it's the first of its kind. Richard001 (talk) 09:51, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd suggest notifying the article talk pages instead of inserting the image. This could be done for every article without an image for starters. But globally acting bots are a difficult issue. --Dschwen (talk) 16:55, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Flickr images upload for a User

I am looking for a method where the database list ONLY my Flickr uploaded images. I have hundreds of images uploaded, however I want to see ONLY a list of Flickr images that I have uploaded, not all my images. In other words a filter that shows ONLY the Flickr images from the hundreds of other images I have uploaded. This list of Flickr ONLY images will be a couple of dozen. All my images are over a couple of thousand. I want a listing of ONLY Flickr images, the list of a couple of dozen pictures. Thanks. --Doug Coldwell (talk) 23:17, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

There's not an easy way to do it with Commons' search functionality. Your best is this Google search. You could also write something against the Mediawiki API to do it pretty easily. Dcoetzee (talk) 23:45, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Copy the whole thing to Excel, you will have the Filename in the second column and you can autofilter for flickr in the 4th column, except png files, you can filter for flickr in the 3rd column. I copied the list here: User:Doug Coldwell/Flickr. this is only complete given that you wrote the word Flickr somewhere in the upload text.

Even easier: enable the Logs filter gadget in your preferences. Then go to your log page, enter "Flickr" in the "Regex string" box at the top, and click the "filter" button. Voilà. If you also enable the Pretty log gadget, you even get small thumbnails for the files. Lupo 08:01, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I keep mine in Category:Flickr files uploaded by User:Richard001 (I'm the second to do this, after Kahuroa). This is useful to me because I don't actually upload them myself (that's too slow), thus I would have difficulty finding them otherwise. The problem is it's easy to forget to add the category, even after 300 uploads... Richard001 (talk) 09:49, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Wow! I didn't think it could be done. These are some great ideas. Thanks.--11:30, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the current wording is legally wrong. I am working on a completely new text for that page now; give me a few days to finish it and I will put it up for discussion. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:06, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I asked Mike to comment on the current policy. I'd like to remind all that this policy states in its introduction: "Almost all fan art constitutes derivative work from some sort of copyrighted material and thus should be speedily deleted from Commons.". Mike wrote to me simply: "I disagree with the statement that "almost all fan art constitutes derivative work." --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul PiotrusTalk 23:08, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I have made a proposal to replace the current policy page on fan art with something more legally correct and I hope useful. Please help improve the wording. It's at Commons:Fan art/Proposal. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 19:18, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I have done some more work on this, and would like feedback on whether the community thinks it may be ready to go live. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:03, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

March 18

AbuseFilter

Special:AbuseFilter is being rolled out on en.wikipedia, see Announcing the Abuse Filter. Additional info at mw:Extension:AbuseFilter. I think this would be very beneficial on this project as a preventative measure against vandalism, and should be implemented. Thoughts? Cirt (talk) 03:38, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I would also support an implementation here at Commons, but let's go easy when we do, with thoutough testing and not to extensive filters being applied. Whatever we do, we don't want to end up in Scunthorpe ;) Finn Rindahl (talk) 06:39, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Support Don't see any problem if it'll be used but persons with experience. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:52, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Support I had a look at it on enwiki and I have to say it went over my head a bit (lack of technical ability, etc!). However, it clearly works, and would be very useful here, I believe. PeterSymonds (talk) 15:25, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Support, provided that, like on wikipedia, filters are tested in log only mode for a few days. There's nothing more annoying than false positives with this kind of automatic filters. –Tryphon☂ 15:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Support Definitely. Let's not all vote for it, though, and hope someone else will pick it up. Who would volunteer to actually implement this and maintain it? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 19:24, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I have been heavily involved in testing the extension, so I know it pretty well. I would certainly work on filters if this were enabled. I've done so on testwiki, my localhost wiki and now on Meta as well & those wikis haven't imploded yet. — Mike.lifeguard 20:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Working it shouldn't be too hard if you have the technical skills. Basically everyone familiar with some kind of logic statements should be able to formulate new filters. Regex skills are a nice-to-have. Regards, -- ChrisiPK(Talk|Contribs) 08:40, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Support This sounds awesome! It's a solution to finding that middle ground between too much protection and too little. Even if we kept it in warn-only mode it still would be useful with the logs and everything. Rocket000(talk) 00:12, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

This seems to be a pretty clear consensus to me (I don't bother adding a number to my own support statement ;). I suggest we ask Werdna that this option can be technically enabled at Commons now, and start a discussion on Commons talk:Abuse filter on how to test and eventually activate this. Might be a good idea to try to get some help from users who have particiapeted in the testing/implementing at de: or en: . One of the first things that needs to be clarified which permission classes we should use (see en:Wikipedia:Abuse_filter#Permissions, and if such rights should be given to all admins by default, handed out by 'crats disrections, or... Regards, Finn Rindahl (talk) 12:33, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

The settings Meta has will be fine - no need for anything fancy. — Mike.lifeguard 14:28, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Oppose - I think a separate AbuseFilter permission should be introduced, as on en:wp... ++Lar: t/c 19:16, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

This system actually has a lot of security problems, and none of them are adressed. Basically it blocks publication of the action, still logs it, which creates a situation whereby actions now being private are logged for later use. When the actions was public it had no real consequences to the users privacy as it was his own actions, but when they are blocked they become private and then it is a privacy issue to use them - not to say log them. In fact, in Norway it would be illegal to use them for any purpose except internal administration of the system. Because of this I wonder whats the real purpose of this system and the logging of user actions. Jeblad (talk) 10:24, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

disappeared category

Do we have a category for images of things that permanently vanished/disappeared at some time after the image had been taken, whereby the image becomes a sort of historic document? With "things" I mean objects that usually don't disappear, so for example buildings (but not only), structures in nature such as a wood or a group of trees, lost/destroyed works of art, etc. --Túrelio (talk) 09:08, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm I don't believe this is very useful, because this should be included in the Description or better in the Wikipedia Article... --Stefan-Xp (talk) 16:25, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

For buildings we have Category:Former buildings (and quite a bit under it). And that one is useful, if only to bring together the categories of former buildings of various cities. But its only parent is Category:Buildings by condition. So we don't currently have a parent along this "dimension".

I do think it could be somewhat useful, as a general way of identifying images of objects that there is no chance of us re-photographing. - Jmabel ! talk 19:21, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

If you think so than you should create such category tree. --Jarekt (talk) 03:47, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Need to "extract" a part of the file name

Hello, as part of the WikiVoc project (where classmate like you are welcome XD ), where all files are name such as WikiVoc-*.svg I need to know how, on wikipedia, extract 'brush' from the full name File:WikiVoc-brush.svg (but also 3 letters 'egg' from File:WikiVoc-egg.svg, or also 'egg' from File:WikiVoc-egg-en.svg). O.o one idea ? Yug(talk) 20:00, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

March 23

Naval History & Heritage Command

I believe that certain photos hosted by the en:Naval History & Heritage Command have been questioned in the past on if they are PD or not. All original U.S. Navy images from there are obviously PD (as a work of the U.S. federal government), but not all of the photos on the Naval History & Heritage Command website are from the U.S. Navy; for instance, many of the images of the German World War II ships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were taken from a contemporary (i.e. circa 1940-ish) German photo album "Meine Kriegserinnerungen auf Schlachtschiff Scharnhorst".

However, recent email correspondence has revealed that "all images posted on the Naval History & Heritage Command's website are in the public domain." Can a template be created to reflect this (I mean, a template that says that it is PD just because it is on that website?)? I can send the email to an OTRS volunteer who can verify the authenticity of it here if need be, though the email stated that for "further documentation [see] http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org11-4.htm". —Ed17(Talk) 17:05, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, can someone create the template and then I will forward the email to OTRS asking them to add a tag to the template itself maybe? —Ed17(Talk) 00:25, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Much captured German WWII material is public domain the United States, due to specific exemptions from the copyrights being restored, but is still considered copyrighted in Germany (the country of origin). So, we typically do not allow those on Commons despite their U.S. copyright status, and despite what the Navy history site says. It is getting closer to when {{Anonymous-EU}} may apply, but not there yet for most of them. Please see Template:PD-USGov-Military-Navy-NHC and Commons:Deletion requests/Template:PD-USGov-Military-Navy-NHC, which is essentially your proposed template, which was deprecated/deleted before. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:15, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

...ah. Would it be allowable to upload these to Wikipedia as PD in the U.S. only using a {{PD-US}} tag (as the servers are in Florida?)? —Ed17(Talk) 15:56, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

This sounds like a good opportunity to revive the ImageBoxes gadget. It would allow for Flickr-like image annotation. In any case I could probably write a bot and host it on the toolserver (together with the astrometry software). Good find! --Dschwen (talk) 17:01, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I sent an Email to the astrometry team. Unfortunately there is an issue with their licensing prohibiting non-commercial use. I'm waiting to hear from them. --Dschwen (talk) 19:27, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I got a positive reply from the astrometry team and I'm currently downloading several gigs of star catalog data from them. The software is now compiled on the toolserver. As soon as the data is downloaded (and I have time) I can start testing it. --Dschwen (talk) 15:00, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Shortening interwiki links (and redirects to categories)

Pages at Wikipedia often have the same name as pages here, and (an) interwiki link(s) are often appropriate in that situation. It would be convenient if there was a shortcut version of e.g. [[en:name of the page]], since it would save typing out [[en:this page has a ridiculously long name]], or pasting it from above. Surely a template could be made, perhaps one for each language or perhaps one for all languages, that would allow you to type much less. For example a language specific template might work like this: you type {{en}} and it produces [[en:*name of the page*]]. Or if it were more general, saving on template creation but adding a couple more keystrokes, it might work like {{iw|en}}, where iw = interwiki and the following code is the language (perhaps it could be shortened in cases where many languages use the same name, e.g. {{iw|en|es|ja}}. Since {{en}} is already taken, as are the same for other languages, the latter is looking like a better option. The template would be converted to text, so that those unfamiliar with it weren't confused about what it was, or why the normal code was missing (bots might be confused about this, for example).

On a related note, a similar shortcut for 'redirect to category of the same name' would also be handy. Richard001 (talk) 09:15, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I've created {{iw}}, which currently takes up to 10 parameters. I'm not sure what you mean for the category redirect shortcut. Pruneautalk 17:10, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

AlNo made me realize that iw could be a future language code, in which case {{iw}} would be needed for that rather than interwikis. I think the risk is quite low: there is no iw in w:ISO 639 (iw is the former code for Hebrew, but is now deprecated and has been replaced with he). Also note that en:Template:iw already exists. Do people feel that the template should be moved? Pruneautalk 17:26, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Didn't know en.wikipedia already had such a template. Thanks for making one here. The category one would be similar, e.g. {{catr}} would create the code for a redirect to a page of the same name with the code :category: inserted before it, i.e. #REDIRECT Category:Page name. Richard001 (talk) 21:44, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

There you go: {{catr}}. It'll probably only work if you subst it. Pruneautalk 15:10, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Creating an official process for approving licensing templates

Recently we discussed an approval process for license templates. I now created a start at Commons:Licence template validation. Please don't take this as an official proposal or anything like that. It's just some thoughts collected to make a start. I invite everybody interested to discuss and improve the idea and create an official approval process. --Slomox (talk) 15:39, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry I haven't been able to start on this myself. Thanks for taking the initiative. It looks like a very promising start. Kaldari (talk) 02:24, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

March 25

I recently made a visit to the Arsenal shop at the Emirates stadium, and while there purchased a photo of Theo Walcott. I was wondering what they copyright is on this? There is nothing on the photo, or on the back.

The photo shows Walcott's head and shoulders, against a white background, on glossy photo paper.

If the copyright is ok on this, I will scan it and upload it here, I just wanted to know whether I can!

Please don't. Owning a copy of a photo doesn't mean you owned the copyright on the photo. The copyright remains with the photographer (who may have licensed it to Arsenal). Lupo 15:20, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

March 26

Flickr upload bot

I've never used the flickr upload bot personally. (always relied on flickr review) A question: if I crop an mage from the original picture using this new method, will the flickr bot still work and upload the image? Please help. Thank You, --Leoboudv (talk) 00:13, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

No, the two Flickr bots we have just creating a image description page and upload the original file in the maximum size. For cropped versions I advise to use Flinfo (just enter the image ID from Flickr) and upload the cropped image with the generated information template and license. FlickrreviewR is not able to review cropped versions, they need a human review but thats no problem. --Martin H. (talk) 04:34, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I would upload the original anyway, just in case the Flickr author decides to delete it. It doesn't really take mucgh longer this way. Cheers OSX (talk • contributions) 02:45, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

OTRS-Permissions: Looking for volunteers

Hi all,

As many of you will know, when Wikimedia users receive permission releases from the copyright holders of media files, they must forward them in to the Permissions OTRS team to be processed, verified, and archived. As a result countless number of media files, including spectacular images and valuable videos, are uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

The OTRS team is always looking to improve their service and I feel that it may be advantageous at this point in time to try and add a significant number of volunteers to the team at the one time. An influx of new volunteers would help cut down the backlog, which currently stands at around 500 across all languages in the Permissions queues, and assist in cutting down response time for future tickets.

Being involved in the OTRS team requires a significant level of trust and responsibility. While Commons adminship is something which can indicate these attributes, it is not required for Permissions work; the OTRS administrators evaluate each application on the merits and skills of the user in question, as well as their activity. The Permissions OTRS team is a vibrant group of users working to process the release of image files under a free license so they can be used on Wikimedia projects, a goal which is directly related to that of the Wikimedia Commons.

If you would like to volunteer to be a member of the Permissions OTRS team, please add your name to m:OTRS/volunteering (including the other relevant details as set out in the template at the top of the page). Applications are generally processed after a small number of days. Permissions is a global queue and spans all languages; at the moment, backlogs currently exist for de, es, it and pt especially, although this naturally fluctuates and applicants with skills in any languages are most welcome to apply.

Is it possible to apply for OTRS and be affected only to the Commons permissions queues? It was not clear on the information pages I looked in the past and the perspective of having to work on requests about biography Wikipedia articles and so on stopped me from proposing my help in the past... --Eusebius (talk) 06:47, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the queues are separate and there is a dedicated Commons-permissions queue entirely separate from the info-en and info-en-Quality queues, so that wouldn't be an issue. MBisanztalk 07:18, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

My main concern is time commitment - is this a "contribute as you're able" thing or will there be some obligatory contribution? Dcoetzee (talk) 17:16, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

.jp2 files

I was looking at File:Zamia angustifolia.jpg, which is only very low resolution (94 KB). However, a much higher resolution original (7 MB) can be downloaded from the source page . . . but only as a .jp2 file. I have downloaded it, but can't open it, and doubt I'll be able to upload it here either. How can it be converted to a .jpg file for uploading? Or can someone else with .jp2 editing software do it? Thanks! - MPF (talk) 00:32, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Postscript - photoshop could open it after all, it just took an age to do so! - problem solved ;-) MPF (talk) 00:36, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, this brings up a good point. We really should allow uploads of JPEG 2000 files, whether or not we can render thumbnails of them, because many libraries archive photos/scans of works in this form. I propose that it be added to the list of allowable file types. Dcoetzee (talk) 02:23, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe JPEG 2000 is still encumbered by patents, while JPEG is not. Kaldari (talk) 15:16, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

According to en:JPEG_2000#Legal_issues this is not the case; at worst there is a small risk of submarine patents, but all the known patents have been released for use without royalties. Dcoetzee (talk) 17:14, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Is this (PD due to publication in Russian Empire) an approved license? Jappalang (talk) 08:28, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean by "widely approved"? I count 3408 files using this template. Lupo 08:31, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I removed the "widely"; I was asking if this license is sanctioned by the project as a whole, seeing how some PD-country templates were redirected at some stage or other, and the advice on the template itself to use {{PD-Russia-2008}} or {{PD-old}} instead. Jappalang (talk) 09:13, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

PD or not

I uploaded a propaganda movie on WWII File:Divide and Conquer (Part I).ogv. Internet Archive's web page states that it is public domain, but some how I wouldn't be so sure. Could some one who is better aware of copyright law check that? If it is, did I use right licence? --QWerk (talk) 09:55, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

The sources of some parts are obviously filmed by German troops or propaganda units and taken in EU-countries → 70 pma or at least after publication if anonymous. These parts have to be deleted. sугсго 11:32, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Bot for tagging images on Wikipedia with Commons compatible licenses

Why isn't there a bot which can automatically upload them to Commons, or at least tag them as valid for that? There are loads of such images on the Wikipedias, and if they're removed from an article, they might never be found again, since ther eis no image categorisation effort there. FunkMonk (talk) 11:07, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

1. Most Wikipedia doesn't really care about copyright. 2. Some Wikipedias have different copyright policies than Commons. The German Wikipedia for example accepts all images which are free according to the copyright laws of the three countries Swiss, Austria and Germany. If an image is FOP there, it is accepted regardless of the laws of it's country of orgin. sугсго 14:18, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, then for English Wikipedia at least, that Wikipedia is very strict about copyright. There are already bots there that review if images are also on Commons, but only after someone has manually tagged them on Wikipedia (Metsbot). If a bot was made that could recognise the compatible tags on English Wikipedia, it should then be able to tag the images itself, and maybe even transfer them automatically. That would save a lot of time. I've personally transferred hundreds of images from Wikipedia to Commons manually through the Commonshelper tool, and it really is a waste of time if a bot can do it just as well. An automated Commonshelper. FunkMonk (talk) 14:26, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Automated transfer is a very bad idea. A large percentage of the images on the English Wikipedia are incorrectly tagged regarding their copyright status. Many images which should be tagged for fair use are falsely tagged under free licenses. This problem is easy to correct as long as the image stays on the English Wikipedia. Once the image is moved to Commons, someone will notice the problem and delete the image, which may be an important or useful image for an article. No one ever moves images back to en.wiki from Commons. They just delete them. Basically all of the Wikipedias should be considered tainted sources for free license images. So mass migrations, without careful human oversight, are not a good idea. Kaldari (talk) 15:12, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, that was only half my question, why not have a bot that tags files with compatible licenses automatically, putting them all in the same category so it will at least be easier for users to find such images and review them manually, and then either give them new tags or prepare them for transfer? FunkMonk (talk) 15:18, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that automatic move is a bad idea at some point I was looking at {{PD-Polish}} images at en and pl wikis and 90% did not meet requirements of the license (now it might be closer to 100% after I moved some). However image transfer is still quite painful, looses all the history of edits and image_talk (last time I checked), and fills {{information}} with a lot of data related to the transfer which is not needed for PD images. I really do not like then the only source of images on Commons is "transfered from wiki". Maybe there should be a manual process of tagging images fit for transfer (by trusted users maybe) which will be then picked up and moved to commons by a bot with the full history and than modified to meet needs of commons. --Jarekt (talk) 17:54, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Jarekt and Multichill. The image transfer process from other projects to Commons does have several flaws. Manual transfers often do not include all information, as many editors don't know or care enough about copyrights and the way Commons works. Just like many projects copy and translate articles from other Wikipedias without even mentioning the source or authors. Bot uploads are not really the answer to this problem, as bot uploads still need to cleaned up by editors. And as soon as the original image on Wikipedia is deleted, there's no way (at least for people without admin status on that project) to look into the version history, for example to see if the license was changed or if some vandal changed names/dates/etc.. Many problems could be avoided if we had the ability to import images from other projects, similar to exporting/importing articles. That way, we would keep the complete version history, so everybody could check for license changes and possible vandalism. Additionally, the images would be listed on the uploader's upload list, making it a lot easier to find all the uploads of an user. --Kam Solusar (talk) 14:48, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Besides the fact that it's our charter, many local Wikipedia communities do not accept noncommercial media, and we can't include any media that any local project does not. Dcoetzee (talk) 02:43, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

March 27

DjVu

Many book scans on Commons are uploaded in single pages. Occasionally I bundle a book and I create a DjVu file. What's the right way to handle the old files? Should they be deleted? --Slomox (talk) 00:06, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

My opinion is, yes, after any use in articles has been replaced by a page reference; however, I would keep full page illustrations and frontispieces separate, as well as any images cropped from the book. Dcoetzee (talk) 03:37, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Category maintenance bot?

Category:SVG marker templates contains 563 media files. As the category is for templates, no media file should be so categorized. Is there a bot that can go through these files removing the incorrect categorisation tag? Globbet (talk) 00:17, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Was just a little error in {{Svg file}}. I fixed it. No need for a bot. But when we talk about {{Svg file}}: Do we need that template? It's rather messy and not really helpful. Either you are interested in tech stuff and you know about SVG or you are not interested in tech stuff and then the template is much too techy to be helpful. And we have tens of thousands of SVG images without that template. --Slomox (talk) 00:41, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I always found it helpful for people like me using IE and Vista, IE users are not able to view .svg files by default, a adobe plugin for vista/IE7 is not offered, finding a free .svg viewer or plugin is not worth the time for most users. .svg and Vista i think will be or is already standard for standard users, .svg is not a standard format so offering png versions is helpful for users and reusers of maps. Btw: The .png alternative should be offered with much more .svg files, it takes me 1/2 year to finally download firefox to view the first .svg file in my Commons live. --Martin H. (talk) 01:50, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

All svg here are rendered into png, so unless you are selecting the original file and not the image page or articles in which the svg is in use, you are seeing a png. I would be curious to know which svg that are here that you cannot see. IE sure seems broken. -- carol (talk) 03:18, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Of course i see the thumbnails and the preview, but if i klick on the image i see... nothing. Hey, im not a specialist, im simply a user with some regular skills - and i did not know what to do with this files. A regulare user does not have anything from a high res .svg because he can not see it, downloading the svg would not bring anything because he does not have software to open it and so the file is totaly useless for him for prepare e.g. a history paper. Providing him a .png link adds value. --Martin H. (talk) 03:29, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

How many SVGs do we have? 50,000, 100,000, 200,000? This template is used on 500 of them. It's not really likely, that a user comes across this template. There are better ways to promote SVG tools. --Slomox (talk) 02:07, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. This template's pointless. There's a reason it's only on 0.01% or less of our SVGs. Time to get rid of it. Rocket000 (talk) 04:21, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Is the category Category:Ships by IMO number a useful category? The question is raised after a 1364 ships are categorised that way and a user wants this category to be deleted. For the discussion please come to the Deletion request page. --Stunteltje (talk) 10:33, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

March 28

File contains script?

Hi all, bit of a technical question here - so do feel free to move this to anywhere which may be a better fit;

In uploading another batch of historic photos I had some 20+ errors saying the file seems to contain a script. (see User:Privatemusings/gallery for example) - I wonder if anyone could shed any light on how to best avoid this problem? I noticed when browsing the pic.s in picasa that they all have a caption which contains html - might this be the offending bit? (if so, how come some worked, and some didn't?) - obviously I can't show you the ones which didn't work, but any pointers would be much appreciated! Cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 02:55, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Probably weblinks in the metadata, have the same problem with Flickr images sometimes. --Martin H. (talk) 03:16, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

yeah - I think there's a link back to the powerhouse museum in the meta data (although I don't really know how to check it?) - the weird thing is that I think the link is actually in all of the photos - including the ones which successfully uploaded?! I'll try and figure out how to examine / edit the meta data, though if anyone could post a simple 'how to' it'd be much appreciated too... cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 04:41, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Strange... I just tried it with one of the files you indicated problems with: File:Sylvia Falls, Leura.jpg. Downloaded the original from Flickr and uploaded here. No problems whatsoever. Lupo 11:10, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

BTW, the files can be downloaded at the Powerhouse Museum website at much higher resolution. I could get this file for instance at 4898×3726px: File:Sylvia Falls, Leura (large).jpg. Lupo 11:35, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

A bit hard to diagnose without having the failing photos. What are the two first bytes of a failing file? Platonides (talk) 23:18, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Allow searching with prefix

I'd like to suggest activating the feature to search within namespaces. This would allow have many uses like searching for older proposals on the commons village pump and other pages like the graphic lab school. This is already done in Wikipedia. For example in the Village pump there searching through all of the village pump would just require prefix:Wikipedia:Village pump . It would benefit our community and make searching for older topics in commons much easier.--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 09:31, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

IIRC, this requires hardware to be installed. The improved search will be rolled out on all wikis when possible. — Mike.lifeguard 22:53, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I've just created a template Template:Russian stamp that adds a category - is this something problematic? Please let me know, because I can't see the downside at the moment. Eug (talk) 06:15, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that usually when someone finds a incorrect categorisation of a file she can click edit, go to the bottom where the categories usually are, and change the category. This way of changing categories is also possible to do by category moving bots and by scripts like "Cat-a-lot" or "Hotcat". When categories are added by templates it is not possible to use bots or scripts. And it is more difficult for humans to find where to change the category when different templates categorise with different parameters. /Ö 11:21, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Another problem with the WVoclicense is that it is not really a license. It is just a wikiprojrct that requires images to be PD (with a double CC-license), I changed the template so that it is just a marker template to link to and advertise the project, and changed all images to use standard license and information templates. (The WVLicense did not contain any special information, just see above, see below or see file history.) /Ö 11:21, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Unrelated to this auto-category problem, but I'm just wondering: what's the point of having a double license with one of the licenses being PD? I mean, when you have to choose between GFDL and cc-by-sa, you make a choice between two sets of restrictions; but with PD, you have absolutely no restriction, so what's the use of the second license? –Tryphon☂ 12:36, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Both versions you uploaded seem to work fine for me... WJBscribe(talk) 20:30, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, your browser either has JavaScript disabled or does not have any supported player.
You can download the clip or download a player to play the clip in your browser.

alright, thank you :\ They DO work when opening the file directly, for me not in the cortado applet. -- Drini 21:09, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Big space

I know that this is an international site, but is it required to have all the languages warning about IP editing displayed at once? On pages like this it is particularly annoying since it makes it easy to miss the notification that the page (image) has been deleted already. Could we have something like we do at the bottom, where you can select the different types of characters from a drop down box? I'm thinking something like a drop down box for the languages, and then maybe some iconic symbols, like the 2 waving flags for "Translation" and a warning icon. Just something that doesn't overwhelm the editing.

Licensing update progress notice

The licensing update proposal to dual license all Wikimedia Foundation wikis under both the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) and the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC-BY-SA) is moving into its final phase. This proposal put forward by the Foundation and made possible by recent changes in the GFDL is contingent on community approval. In a few days a site notice for all editors will announce the start of vote on this proposal that is expected to last three weeks. In the mean time we would invite you to visit the update proposal and its associated FAQ if you want to learn more. We would also appreciate your help finishing the translation effort for the core documents associated with this process.

March 30

Category page crashing my computer

Hello, I've tried several times to load the Category page "Animations of machinery", http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Animations_of_machinery and every time it starts to load and rapidly brings my computer to its knees--so much so that the mouse eventually freezes up and I can't even get Firefox to stop loading the page, or to access the Task Manager, or anything. I realize the page contains a large number of animated gifs, but am surprised to find it essentially crashing my machine. A related category page, Animations of engines, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Animations_of_engines loads slowly but does load. My question is whether this kind of thing happens to other people, if it is just a very demanding page or if there is something technically wrong with it, and if there are ways to view such a page without having to load up all the data in full. Specs of the machine I'm using: HP Pavilion d6000; 1.73 GHz, 1733 Mhz, 2 Cores, 2 Logical Processors; 1 GB Physical Memory, 2.23 Virtual Memory; Windows Vista; web browser Firefox 3.0.8. Thanks. Pfly (talk) 05:24, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Licensing??? Please Help!!

I just started using Wiki to set up an encyclopedia reference for a friend whose husband was a forgotten but noteworthy artist.

I am reading all the licensing choices, but mine isn't there.

I am not the artist (the artist passed away over 20 years ago), but I represent by contract the artist's wife who wants to put her husband's name back in the public eye.

The photos I uploaded are photos that I took of her husband's original paintings (so the photos belong to me).

The original drawings are not on public display, but will be shortly, but many have been in museums and galleries in the past.

What options do I have as far as licensing is concerned.

Please tell me for copyrighted material and noncopyrighted material.

They are about to delete my photos as they say that it is not my original work (even though the photographs are my own.)

The wife of the artist doesn't have a computer so if I had to show Wikimedia proof that I am allowed to display these photos, I would have to mail WikiMedia a copy of the signed document. Thanks (BStet--EricdeKolb (talk) 21:38, 28 March 2009 (UTC))

Since the artist passed away only 20 years ago, all of his works are still copyrighted. To make things simple, if the artists's wife (who is the current copyright holder of these works) wants her husband's works to be uploaded on Wikimedia, she can either: 1) release them into the public domain, in which case she loses all her rights over the works; 2) release them under a free license allowing anyone to use them for any purpose (including commercial ones) provided that there is proper attribution.

For non-copyrighted works (1st option), use the following license, which covers both the copyright status of the work and of your photographs of them: {{PD-Art|PD-heirs}}

This is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art. The work of art itself is in the public domain for the following reason:

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse

The heirs of this work's copyright holder (usually the creator) have released it into the public domain. This applies worldwide.

In some countries this may not be legally possible; if so:The heirs of the creator grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

The official position taken by the Wikimedia Foundation is that "faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain".This photographic reproduction is therefore also considered to be in the public domain. In other jurisdictions, re-use of this content may be restricted; see Reuse of PD-Art photographs for details.

For copyrighted works (2nd option), choose the license you want to indicate the copyright status of your photographs, and the following license to indicate the copyright status of the works themselves: {{Attribution|nolink=[''name of wife'']|text=[''Name of wife''], wife of [''name of artist''], has granted this permission through her legal representative, [[User:MEricdeKolb|EricdeKolb]].}}

The copyright holder of this file, [name of wife], allows anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that the copyright holder is properly attributed. Redistribution, derivative work, commercial use, and all other use is permitted.

Attribution: [Name of wife], wife of [name of artist], has granted this permission through her legal representative, EricdeKolb.

comment Commons only accepts licensing that is free, the image must be released for any purpose including commercial use. I see in your original post that the works you have photographed are to be put on display before releasing them under a free license you should consult with the gallery and ensure they are aware that the work is being released under a free license as this may alter or void the terms of any contract or agreement with them. Gnangarra 04:51, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Correction to BomBom: PD-Art is not applicable here, because the author has not been dead long enough, and because we're only supposed to use that when the photographer doesn't give permission (if the photographer releases their work into the public domain explicitly, as we prefer, then one of the PD-old templates by itself is preferable). The reason for this is that PD-Art images are restricted in some nations (e.g. the UK) and for images where this concern is not warranted, we should not raise false concerns. Dcoetzee (talk) 03:48, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Deutsche Fotothek donates 250k images under CC-BY-SA

OK, I got an odd question/situation

Im an American living in Mexico City. One day way back in September, while surfing the Web, I came across the web site for the president of Mexico. At that time, I was doing a LOT of work on Commons and English Wikipedia about Mexico. On a whim, I wrote a message on the president's website stating that getting good articles written and photos published would help promote the country. I also asked for some old photos of some buildings in the center of Mexico City, like the Cathedral. Then I forgot about it. Imagine my surprise today to find an envelope for me from the Mexican government with a disk with 6 photos from 1906 to 1922!!!!! However, upon reading the documents, it does not appear I have permission to upload these photos into Commons.... yet. The documents I received are an inventory and a application form to get permission to publish the photos.

So what do I do now? One of the things they want is something stating that I am a representative of Wikimedia... I dont know if I am or could be. Id be willing to scan and email the documents I received but I dont know who to send them to. Leigh Thelmadatter — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thelmadatter (talk • contribs) 00:12, 2009 March 21 (UTC)

I dont know. I have asked User:Bastique about it; maybe he knows how and with whom to follow through with this if you judge the photos worth the trouble. Lupo 16:05, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I think so. These are old photos of Mexico's most iconic structures. Besides, if we start with this, we could set up a process to get more. Im willing to act as go-between as I live in Mexico City.Thelmadatter (talk) 01:09, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Answered part of this on my talk page. Bastiquedemandez 22:09, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Google

Why in the world doesn't Google index any of the images from Commons? Even if the image is titled something like File:Lemon.jpg we get no hits. We have the best pictures on the net and search engines should index them.-- penubag (talk) 22:57, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

If I search for "File:Lemon.jpg" on images.google.nl, see here the first hit I get is: File:Lemon.jpg - Wikimedia Commons 1200 x 848 - 280 kB - jpg. Did you look at images.google?? -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 23:53, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

When I preformed that search, that image did not show up (which is why I posted) I see it is there now. But still, unless an image's title is the search term, Commons' images don't show up. It'd be nice if search engines looked at the {{description}) template and use that to display hits.-- penubag (talk) 00:20, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

True, but if I search file:lemons.jpg on google images, I get nothing-- penubag (talk) 06:37, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Maybe because the colon has a specific syntaxic meaning in Google queries, just like it has a specific syntactic meaning on Mediawiki (just not the same). Anyway, what's your point? That Google images is not omniscient? --Eusebius (talk) 07:43, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I know it's nothing we can do here, but it'd be nice if more images from Commons show up on search engines. -- penubag (talk) 22:48, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

March 31

Joyo kanji batch uploading

Following this, I got an XML list of the kanji here. Is this enough ? --Ταελ_ (talk) 22:48, 31 March 2009 (UTC)